After a year long battle, the Senate Health Care Overhaul bill passed the House of Representatives Sunday night by a narrow 219 to 212 margin. Succeeding where many past Congresses and administrations have failed, President Obama and the House and Senate Democrats have managed to extend nearly universal health care to America for the first time. ”This is what change looks like,” Obama said in televised remarks after the historic vote. “We proved that this government – a government of the people and by the people – still works for the people.”
Whether or not the people believe that the bill working for them may come down to each side of the debate’s marketing machines. Studies that show that the bill will, in the long term, more than pay for itself, but James Capretta, a top budget official in the George W. Bush administration, is still skeptical that the Democrats are going to be able to convince the American people that this isn’t just a waste of money. Particularly with mid-term elections brewing amongst a public that decidedly does not approve of the House or the Senate. His estimate of the numbers of people that will benefit from the much discussed new bill before November are in the “single-digit millions.” In other words, according to Capretta, “There aren’t enough people in those categories to say, ‘Yes, the increased taxes are worth it.’”
But Chris Jennings, a consultant who was the Clinton administration’s senior health policy advisor, thinks otherwise. In his eyes, the new laws include “many important, immediately available policies that people will care about. If we can’t market them well, then we will have deserved to fail.”
So what will the immediate effects be for the average American? There are several “early deliverables” that will be a big relief to many parents. For starters, the bill will allow dependent children to stay on their parent’s health insurance plans until age 26. With entry level jobs getting harder and harder to find and less and less likely to offer health insurance, being able to keep a child on family health insurance for a few more years will make a big difference to parents in all walks of life. Insurance plans will also be banned from excluding pre-existing medical conditions from coverage for children under age 19, though they can still reject children outright from coverage in the individual market until 2014.
Your existing insurance will also be more secure, particularly in regards to costly medical issues or life threatening injuries. Insurers can no longer cancel insurance retroactively for anything less than outright fraud. Also, insurance plans will be barred from imposing lifetime caps on coverage and restrictions will also be placed on annual coverage limits.
Retirees and their families will also receive an immediate assist with rebates this year for the 4 million Medicare beneficiaries who hit the “doughnut hole” in the prescription coverage plan. Next year, the cost of drugs for those in the Medicare coverage gap will go down by 50 percent. Also starting in 2010, many kinds of preventive care will be free of co-payment or deductible.
Small business owners will see immediate benefits too. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees and average wages of less than $50,000 can qualify for a tax credit of up to 35% of the cost of their premiums.
Your insurance company will also be subject to more oversight to make sure money is being spent where it should be spent. Reports on how much money is being spend on medical care versus administration costs will begin immediately, followed by tighter government review of premium increases.
