Secures Four Amendments in Health Care Reform Bill Washington, Jul 17 -
In addition to securing a historic victory for states’ single-payer health care, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today won adoption of four other amendments in HR 3200, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act. The Kucinich amendments:
• drive down the cost and increase the access of prescription drugs by ending the pharmaceutical industry’s practice of manipulating physician prescribing habits to pharmaceutical representatives;
• ending the insurance industry practice of raising costs or decreasing coverage for Americans during the time Americans are not allowed to switch plans;
• require the disclosure of insurance company costs like advertising and marketing costs, as well as executive compensation, that use consumer’s money to increase profits instead of covering care;
• improve access to integrative medicine by requiring its consideration for standard coverage and by requiring the identification of integrative medicine providers .
“With the addition of this language,
this is a stronger bill that will protect Americans and hold health insurance companies accountable to their customers,” said Kucinich.
(emphasis added)
I fairly certain the bill still accomplishes these objectives.
There are also a lot of other great things in the bill:
Starting next year, private insurers could no longer deny anyone coverage based on preexisting conditions, place lifetime limits on coverage or abandon people when they become ill. Insurers would be required to disclose and justify proposed premium increases to regulators, and could not remove adult children younger than 27 from their parents’ family policies.
For the elderly, the group that has been most skeptical of Obama’s initiative, the House package would immediately offer discounts on prescription drugs and reduce a gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage, closing it entirely by 2019. Uninsured people who cannot get coverage could join temporary high-risk insurance pools, and unemployed workers would be permitted to keep their COBRA benefits until the public plan and insurance exchanges started in 2013.
link“For all Americans, this legislation makes a big difference: no discrimination for pre-existing medical conditions, no dropped coverage if you are sick,
no co-pays for preventive care. There is a cap on what you pay in but there is no cap on the benefits that you receive. It works for seniors closing the donut hole, offering better primary care, and strengthening Medicare for years to come. It works for women preventing insurance companies from charging women more than men for the same coverage. No longer will being a woman be a pre-existing medical condition.
linkSupporters of gay rights have long been trying to change the tax treatment of health benefits provided by employers to the domestic partners of their employees. In effect, such benefits are now treated as taxable income for the employee, and the employer may owe payroll taxes on their fair-market value.
Under the bill, such benefits would be tax-free, just like health benefits provided to the family of an employee married to a person of the opposite sex.
Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, who proposed the change, said it would “correct a longstanding injustice, end a blatant inequity in the tax code and help make health care coverage more affordable for more Americans.”
Joseph R. Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group, said federal tax law had not kept up with changes in the workplace.
link
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
