Except for the Senate's exclusion of a public option, the current bills mirror Obama's proposal

[ProSense]

THE OBAMA PLAN: STABILITY & SECURITY FOR ALL AMERICANS

"It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will lower the cost of health care for our families, our businesses, and our government."

– President Barack Obama

If You Have Health Insurance

More Stability and Security

• Ends discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. Over the last three years, 12 million people were denied coverage directly or indirectly through high premiums due to a pre-existing condition. Under the President’s plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny coverage for health reasons or risks.
  
  
• Limits premium discrimination based on gender and age. The President’s plan will end insurers’ practice of charging different premiums or denying coverage based on gender, and will limit premium variation based on age.
  
  
• Prevents insurance companies from dropping coverage when people are sick and need it most. The President’s plan prohibits insurance companies from rescinding coverage that has already been purchased except in cases of fraud. In most states, insurance companies can cancel a policy if any medical condition was not listed on the application – even one not related to a current illness or one the patient didn’t even know about. A recent Congressional investigation found that over five years, three large insurance companies cancelled coverage for 20,000 people, saving them from paying $300 million in medical claims - $300 million that became either an obligation for the patient’s family or bad debt for doctors and hospitals.
  
  
• Caps out-of pocket expenses so people don’t go broke when they get sick. The President’s plan will cap out-of-pocket expenses and will prohibit insurance companies from imposing annual or lifetime caps on benefit payments. A middle-class family purchasing health insurance directly from the individual insurance market today could spend up to 50 percent of household income on health care costs because there is no limit on out-of-pocket expenses.
  
  
• Eliminates extra charges for preventive care like mammograms, flu shots and diabetes tests to improve health and save money. The President’s plan ensures that all Americans have access to free preventive services under their health insurance plans. Too many Americans forgo needed preventive care, in part because of the cost of check-ups and screenings that can identify health problems early when they can be most effectively treated. For example, 24 percent of women age 40 and over have not received a mammogram in the past two years, and 38 percent of adults age 50 and over have never had a colon cancer screening.
  
  
• Protects Medicare for seniors. The President’s plan will extend new protections for Medicare beneficiaries that improve quality, coordinate care and reduce beneficiary and program costs. These protections will extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for care for future generations.
  
  
• Eliminates the "donut-hole" gap in coverage for prescription drugs. The President’s plan begins immediately to close the Medicare "donut hole" - a current gap in its drug benefit - by providing a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs for seniors who fall into it. In 2007, over 8 million seniors hit this coverage gap in the standard Medicare drug benefit. By 2019, the President’s plan will completely close the "donut hole". The average out-of-pocket spending for such beneficiaries who lack another source of insurance is $4,080.

If You Don't Have Insurance

Quality, Affordable Choices for All Americans

• Creates a new insurance marketplace – the Exchange – that allows people without insurance and small businesses to compare plans and buy insurance at competitive prices. The President’s plan allows Americans who have health insurance and like it to keep it. But for those who lose their jobs, change jobs or move, new high quality, affordable options will be available in the exchange. Beginning in 2013, the Exchange will give Americans without access to affordable insurance on the job, and small businesses one-stop shopping for insurance where they can easily compare options based on price, benefits, and quality.
  
  
• Provides new tax credits to help people buy insurance. The President’s plan will provide new tax credits on a sliding scale to individuals and families that will limit how much of their income can be spent on premiums. There will also be greater protection for cost-sharing for out-of-pocket expenses.
  
  
• Provides small businesses tax credits and affordable options for covering employees. The President’s plan will also provide small businesses with tax credits to offset costs of providing coverage for their workers. Small businesses who for too long have faced higher prices than larger businesses, will now be eligible to enter the exchange so that they have lower costs and more choices for covering their workers.
  
  
• Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice. The President believes this option will promote competition, hold insurance companies accountable and assure affordable choices. It is completely voluntary. The President believes the public option must operate like any private insurance company – it must be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.
  
  
• Immediately offers new, low-cost coverage through a national "high risk" pool to protect people with preexisting conditions from financial ruin until the new Exchange is created. For those Americans who cannot get insurance coverage today because of a pre-existing condition, the President’s plan will immediately make available coverage without a mark-up due to their health condition. This policy will offer protection against financial ruin until a wider array of choices become available in the new exchange in 2013.

For All Americans

Reins In the Cost of Health Care for Our Families, Our Businesses, and Our Government

• Won’t add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront. The President’s plan will not add one dime to the deficit today or in the future and is paid for in a fiscally responsible way. It begins the process of reforming the health care system so that we can further curb health care cost growth over the long term, and invests in quality improvements, consumer protections, prevention, and premium assistance. The plan fully pays for this investment through health system savings and new revenue including a fee on insurance companies that sell very expensive plans.
  
  
• Requires additional cuts if savings are not realized. Under the plan, if the savings promised at the time of enactment don’t materialize, the President will be required to put forth additional savings to ensure that the plan does not add to the deficit.
  
  
• Implements a number of delivery system reforms that begin to rein in health care costs and align incentives for hospitals, physicians, and others to improve quality. The President’s plan includes proposals that will improve the way care is delivered to emphasize quality over quantity, including: incentives for hospitals to prevent avoidable readmissions, pilots for new "bundled" payments in Medicare, and support for new models of delivering care through medical homes and accountable care organizations that focus on a coordinated approach to care and outcomes.
  
  
• Creates an independent commission of doctors and medical experts to identify waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system. The President’s plan will create an independent Commission, made up of doctors and medical experts, to make recommendations to Congress each year on how to promote greater efficiency and higher quality in Medicare. The Commission will not be authorized to propose or implement Medicare changes that ration care or affect benefits, eligibility or beneficiary access to care. It will ensure that your tax dollars go directly to caring for seniors.
  
  
• Orders immediate medical malpractice reform projects that could help doctors focus on putting their patients first, not on practicing defensive medicine. The President’s plan instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on awarding medical malpractice demonstration grants to states funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as soon as possible.
  
  
• Requires large employers to cover their employees and individuals who can afford it to buy insurance so everyone shares in the responsibility of reform. Under the President’s plan, large businesses – those with more than 50 workers – will be required to offer their workers coverage or pay a fee to help cover the cost of making coverage affordable in the exchange. This will ensure that workers in firms not offering coverage will have affordable coverage options for themselves and their families. Individuals who can afford it will have a responsibility to purchase coverage – but there will be a "hardship exemption" for those who cannot.

[dkf]

1. Except no mandate. That is the main sticking point for me.

[impik]

15. Right, but he was wrong to campaign against mandates

And he admitted so many months back. He said that Hillary convinced him, and she was right. You gotta get everyone in order to lower costs.

[dkf]

17. Mandates are a political loser.

I'd like to know how she would have controlled costs because to me if you want to mandate I buy something you better make damned sure it works close to perfect. You fix it FIRST before you make me do anything.

[KrR]

19. The mandate itself controls costs...

The more insured people we have the less cost there is compared to a system where the uninsured go to the ER, get a huge bill, then go bankrupt. Then the hospital has to charge those that do have insurance $5 for an aspirin.

[dkf]

24. Depends how gouged the populace is.

You know what? You really make me feel like buying health insurance stock. If people don't dare to make sure they aren't screwed then why shouldn't I make tons of money off the loser populace. I've been holding back because it rubs me wrong but all this is such a windfall profit no brainer.

I'll take my frustrations and laugh all the way to the bank.

Suckers.

[midnight]

30. To lower costs, you need competition.... This bill has no competition.

[babylonsister]

2. Thanks for trying, ProSense. nt

[scheming daemons]

3. Reality doesn't matter to the Obama bashers

...but thanks for the effort, ProSense.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

4. This bill is about 80% of what we wanted....

Grab the 80% now and get the rest later.

[WT Fuheck]

5. So you're saying he always hated women and their petty right to choose

what to do with their own bodies?

That's enlightening.

[ProSense]

7. No, you're saying that.

And you apparently know it sounds stupid.

[WT Fuheck]

13. what part of his bill do the Nelson anti-choice provisions mirror

while you're gazing

or have we already passed through that particular mirror?

[karynnj]

8. You have the right to choose in the Senate bill

At the very worse, there may be a charge for a rider. This may be not what you want, but it is consistent with the current abortion funding law. Sacrificing HCR for more - which you won't even get because it will fail - is pretty silly.

[WT Fuheck]

9. a right to choose to insure abortion separately from all other medical coverage

how disingenuous can you be? This language exists specifically to provide a challenge to Roe v. Wade.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

16. Ever heard of the Hyde Amendment...

Been around since 1976 and prohibits federal funds to pay for abortions. While I agree that it should be placed on the dustbin of history, you really shouldn't be surprised to find that the Senate Bill follows existing law. And just in case you're wondering, given a choice of this Bill with the Hyde Amendment and no bill at all, I'll take this Bill and continue to work toward repealing Hyde.

[WT Fuheck]

32. The Nelson changes go much farther than the Hyde Amendment

They also prohibit any private insurer who participates in the plan (which would be, let's see--ALL THE FUCKING INSURANCE COMPANIES!) from providing abortion coverage as part of any standard insurance package.

In case you were wondering.

[karynnj]

23. I am not being disengenuos

Abortion is a hot button issue. Of those who care passionately neither will accept moving the line one millimeter. Just as most here would not allow another condition (ie waiting 24 hours, signing more consents as well as far more difficult requirements), the anti-abortion people will not allow a major increase in the ease of getting one. I am not condoning that - it is reality.

The Senate Democrats worked hard to create 2 compromises, each of which tries to keep things as they are now with the Hyde amendment. The fact is that we can not lose even one Senator because of how abortion is treated. That battle has to be fought separately or possibly outside the government with more donations to organizations like planned parenthood for women who do not opt to get the policy that covers abortion.

This is not optimal, but it is political reality. You also need to consider that, much as you disagree, these are people acting under their own value system. There were many people who voted against their economic interests and sometimes for the candidate they trusted less because this was an overriding issue. If you start with the assumption that abortion is killing a baby, this makes sense. (Note the word "assume" and realize that I am speaking of what their value system leads them to wholeheartedly assume.) This is something where the uneasy status quo might be as far as we can go.

[WT Fuheck]

33. So, your partisan political pragmatism tells you

it is okay to screw every woman in the country in order to "win" on this issue

Nice.

[Cha]

6. Thanks for all the research

Pro Sense.

[ipaint]

10. 404 Page Not Found, Got a working link? I have another one might interest you.

Obama-Biden Plan

The Obama-Biden plan both builds on and improves our current insurance system, which most Americans
continue to rely upon, and leaves Medicare intact for older and disabled Americans. Under the Obama-Biden
plan, Americans will be able to maintain their current coverage, have access to new affordable options, and see
the quality of their health care improve and their costs go down. The Obama-Biden plan provides new
affordable health insurance options by: (1) guaranteeing eligibility for all health insurance plans; (2) creating a
National Health Insurance Exchange to help Americans and businesses purchase private health insurance; (3)
providing new tax credits to families who can’t afford health insurance and to small businesses with a new
Small Business Health Tax Credit; (4) requiring all large employers to contribute towards health coverage for
their employees or towards the cost of the public plan; (5) requiring all children have health care coverage; (5)
expanding eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs; and (6) allowing flexibility for state health reform
plans.
(1) GUARANTEED ELIGIBILITY. Obama and Biden will require insurance companies to cover pre-existing
conditions so all Americans, regardless of their health status or history, can get comprehensive benefits at fair
and stable premiums.
(2) NEW AFFORDABLE, ACCESSIBLE HEALTH INSURANCE OPTIONS. The Obama-Biden plan will create a
National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals purchase new affordable health care options if they are
uninsured or want new health insurance. Through the Exchange, any American will have the opportunity to
enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan, and income-based sliding scale tax credits will be
provided for people and families who need it.
...
Quality and efficiency. Participating hospitals and providers that participate in the new public plan will
be required to collect and report data to ensure that standards for health care quality, health information
technology and administration are being met.

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf

You know the public plan obama said today he didn't campaign on.

[ProSense]

12. Here

link

[KrR]

20. Yes he wanted a PO what is your point? n/t

[firedupdem]

11. ProSense...

You rock! I really appreciate your posts. Thanks!

[impik]

14. True. And the public option

wasn't something he put a lot of emphasize on when he was running. He talked about it much much more when this debate started after he got elected. So while he can't say that he didn't campaign on it, i think he clearly meant to say that it was never the most important thing in his plan.

[quaker bill]

18. and said as much over and over again n/t

[jeanpalmer]

21. Where does this information come from?

Source, please.

[jeanpalmer]

22. "The President’s plan

will extend new protections for Medicare beneficiaries that improve quality, coordinate care and reduce beneficiary and program costs. These protections will extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for care for future generations." How will it accomplish that?

The Medicare Trust Fund is empty. There's no money in it. How can this bill extend the life of something that is empty?

Does this bill divert any money from Medicare to pay for the new private insurance? How much? How can taking money out of Medicare strengthen it?

Why does the plan end gender discrimination, but only "limit" age discrimination? What is the age discrimination limited to?

How does this bill reduce or control private insurers' stranglehold on care?

What share of the new spending will go to insurance company profits and executive bonuses? Is there any element of the new spending that will not pass through the hands of private insurers?

His plan will impose "a fee on insurance companies that sell very expensive plans." Is this a tax? Is this a tax on the people who buy these plans? Why does he want to impose a tax on something that provides good healthcare, albeit at a high price?

Does his plan prohibit the selling of junk insurance? Please quote the bill.

Does his plan reduce prescription costs for the general population?

He says his plan won't add one dime to the deficit "today or in the future." Starting in 2013, though, doessn't his plan go into deficit, annually spending $130-$140 billion and raising only $100 billion in revenue? Doesn't his plan frontload revenues in the current years to offset deficits in the years 2013-2019? And doesn't his plan go into permanent deficit in 2020?

The funding for his plan is heavily dependent on “Medicare savings.” Do you really believe his plan will achieve $400 billion in Medicare savings? How?

Do the mandates increase health care costs for people currently not contributing to the private insurers? How many people will experience this increase? Numbers please.

How do we get from this expanded private insurance plan to some form of real HCR like single payer? This plan seems to lock in private insurance.

Currently, the annual healthcare bill in the US is about $8,000 per person, if you use VP Biden's estimate of healthcare spending at $2.4 trillion. How much will this per person cost decrease, or increase, under his plan?

[bornskeptic]

31. I like easy questions. I'll take this one.

"The Medicare Trust Fund is empty. There's no money in it. How can this bill extend the life of something that is empty?"

The Medicare Trust Fund is not empty yet. The latest prediction is that it will be empty in 2017, unless something is done to extend its life.

[freddie mertz]

25. What is your opinion of the president's lie about the PO?

That makes all of this rather beside the point.

If we can't trust him to tell the truth on the most basic level, how can we continue to support the man?

I am asking this in all sincerity, not as a rhetorical question.

[jeanpalmer]

26. That's the same question I'm asking

He flat out lied about mandates, reimportation of drugs, and the public option. And he's now putting out all kinds of rosy predictions to boost his mandated insurance plan. I don't trust him to be truthful about it. Why would anyone believe him?

[freddie mertz]

27. Impossible after THIS:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7300576

[Vinca]

28. We've been bamboozled.

[freddie mertz]

29. And the president is trying to tell us we never heard what he said ON THE RECORD.

Orwell, meet Obama.