The Benefits of the Senate Health Reform Bill

Thursday, December 24, 2009

The Benefits of the Senate Health Reform Bill

The United States Senate is on the verge of passing historic health reform legislation. Taken together, the provisions of this bill represent the most significant health reform since the creation of Medicare.

The Senate health reform bill will:

• Extend coverage to 31 million Americans, the largest expansion of coverage since the creation of Medicare.
• Ensure that you can choose your own doctor.
• Finally stop insurance companies from denying coverage due to a pre-existing condition.
• Make sure you will never be charged exorbitant premiums on the basis of your age, health, or gender.
• Guarantee you will never lose your coverage just because you get sick or injured.
• Protect you from outrageous out-of-pocket expenditures by establishing lifetime and annual limits.
• Allow young people to stay on their parents' coverage until they're 26 years old.
• Create health insurance exchanges, or “one-stop shops” for individuals purchasing insurance, where insurance companies are forced to compete for new customers.
• Lower premiums for families, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office -- especially for struggling folks who will receive subsidies.
• Help small businesses provide health care coverage to their employees with tax credits and by allowing them to purchase coverage through the exchanges.
• Improve and strengthen Medicare by eliminating waste and fraud (without cutting basic benefits), beginning to close the Medicare Part D donut hole, and extending the life of the Medicare trust fund.
• Create jobs by reining in costs -- fostering competition, reducing waste and inefficiency, and starting to reward doctors and hospitals for quality, not quantity, of care.
• Cut the deficit by over $130 billion in the next 10 years.