Harry Reid has released the Senate health care reform bill, and it is scheduled for a cloture vote on Saturday. The vote to cut off a potential filibuster is the critical one, requiring sixty votes to pass.
At this point, both the Senate and House bills include a form of public option, but there is other good news as well:
- The bill provides for insurance exchanges, which will include a public option, but not until 2014. Individual states can opt out of the public option.
- Insurance companies have to accept all new customers, even with preexisting conditions, cannot cancel people when they get sick, and cannot charge sick people more than healthy people.
- Annual and lifetime limits are prohibited.
- A mandate requiring everyone to have insurance (with a $750 fine), but there are subsidies for the poor.
- Companies with more than 50 employees are required to provide insurance. Tax credits to help small businesses afford insurance.
- Insurance policies are required to explain their benefits on a standardized form in understandable English.
- If you are denied coverage, there is an appeals process so you can fight back.
- New taxes on so-called “gold-plated” health insurance plans, medical devices, and elective surgery offset the cost of the bill, actually reducing the deficit.
Read about it in Electoral-Vote.
UPDATE: Not surprisingly, the Republicans have declared “a holy war” against the bill, which is an unbelievably poor choice of words.
3 Comments
I think Harry Reid deserves some credit for this. But we should still never underestimate the ability of Democrats to totally screw up at the eleventh hour. So, please call your Senators before Saturday night:
http://advocacy.barackobama.com/healthcare/campaigns/14/call_scripts/39/call_sessions/new
Yes, call your Senators and reaffirm your opposition to another bloodsucking entitlement program the Dems/Libs/Progressives are trying to ram through. At 68, I receive SS, am entitled to Medicare even though I REFUSE to pay for it and will not use it. These are programs the people never asked for, were forced on us by Libs/Progressives, the big government people, and look what they are doing to our country. Private accounts were the way to go, they are the way to go today, but the Left will never vote to give up any of their power over the people. You will dance to the tune of the Fed Gov’t.
Ettucat, pretty much every poll done shows that Medicare is wildly popular and successful. I respect you as one of the few people who refuses to use a program they don’t believe in, but just because you feel that way doesn’t mean you are right, or that the majority of people agree with you.
And please tone down the rhetoric, or take it somewhere else.