as read from the draft available from the house ways and means here

Line 23 – Church Health Plans are exempt from taxation.  ugh…

Page 16: Your current health care plan isn’t being destroyed

Page 34: There will be a healthcare committee to review claim denials (I’m sure this is something the health care companies don’t like at all!)

Page 37: We’ll have a department actually watching over healthcare in this country (hopefully better than the SEC watches business)

Page 71: There will be an 800 phone number to help people decide on what plan to get.

Page 72: All children are covered no matter what in their first year of life if born in the United States (I thought I saw something earlier about everyone under 21 being covered as well).

Page 80: The Insurance Exchange will be audited.

Page 84: There will be a tax on companies not offering “acceptable” health care coverage.  I’m not sure if I like the idea that all companies HAVE to offer coverage as a benefit.  Hopefully I’m misunderstanding this section somehow…

Page 85: Individual states can operate their own Insurance Exchanges if they don’t like the Federal one.

Page 92: Insurance premiums are set for the public option at rates that will gaurantee the program stays funded – including contingencies (line 16)

Page 93: The program will initially receive start-up funds from the government. The amount is unspecified as of this draft.

Page 95: In the first three years of the program physicians will earn 5% more if they participate in the public health plan and medicaid/care at the same time.  I’m assuming this is to combat the fear that doctors (like some British dentists) will just not participate.

Page 98: VERY IMPORTANT- “limitation on balance billing.”  In California this is already illegal (but still widely practiced – I myself was a victim in 2008 to the tune of thousands of dollars in “balance billing”), but this is awesome that they’re making it policy nationwide.  …of course, that is only if you’re on the public health care plan (or one from the exchange), if you’re on Blue Cross in Ohio – you’re on your own…

Page 103: Affordability credits will be available to citizens and immigrants who have an income no more than 4 times the poverty level.  See here for those actual levels.  (For a single person in most states it would be around $43,000 a year)

When I first moved to Los Angeles I didn’t have a job or health care.  A few months later I had a very low paying job and hadn’t got a health care plan yet.  I had to go to the emergency room one night with an infection.  It cost a LOT of cash.  If this plan were already enacted my low income would have enabled me to have much more affordable health insurance and I wouldn’t have waited till things got really bad to see a doctor.

Page 114: In very plain language it is stated that these credits will in no way be used for any illegal aliens.  Apparently the conservative talking heads haven’t read this.

Page 116: Is this saying that an employer is required to pay a certain percentage of a full time employees premium?  If so, I’m not sure I agree with that.

Page 118: Employers can pay a set amount to the government instead of providing healthcare coverage to their employees (think of this as a tax I suppose).

Page 151:  This makes my question above perfectly clear – if a company doesn’t elect to provide coverage it is accessed an “excise tax.”

Page 154: Certain small businesses are exempt and will actually receive credits to help provide health care.  There are specific dollar amounts and percentages (rules for employers with ten employees making less than $125,000 for example), but you can read all those for yourself (at least now you know which page to skip to).

Page 163:  Is this saying we’ll have smart insurance cards?  Uh-oh, the religious “mark of the beast” people are going to go nuts over this.  Also, “preventative care visits” sound like a good idea.

Page 164: this begins the changes to Medicare and Medicaid.  As I’m not at all familiar with these programs so I can’t really comment on anything in here regarding a change to the current policies…although things like the following make me think Sarah Palin is an idiot (or can’t read, or both):

“expanding access to vaccines”

“elimination of 190 day limit on psychiatric hospital stays”

“required disclosure of nursing home ownership”

“dementia and abuse prevention training”

“increased funding to fight waste, fraud and abuse”

“required coverage of preventive services”

—–okay… sheesh… I just found out there is a newer version of the bill here. ugh… Apparently this is the one that conservatives have been trying to frighten old people with – so I’ll review this one from now on:

Or at least I was going to.  I was looking for the exact pages in the bill that the conservatives had issues with so I could do my own research.  However, this site actually already explains away most of them, so please read there and then double check against the bill I linked to in the paragraph above.

There are some interesting things in there for sure.  I don’t like the idea of an employer in any way required to provide health care.  It sounds nice, but that is not an employer’s responsibility.  It will be interesting to see just how the “small businesses” end up being defined. Other than that I think the bill is okay, and the conservative talking points are either blown out of proportion, completely (and/or purposefully) misunderstood, or outright lies.

Unless you really think Obama wants to kill your mama.  really?  Yes, he’s really pushing through a bill to make life harder for seniors.  Can someone (who actually believe this) explain Obama’s motivation for this?

Can someone else also explain why if these liberal ideas are so bad what happened to the great ideas the republicans pushed through when they were in control of all three branches?  oh wait… that’s right… they think/thought our current healthcare system is picture perfect.  Is it..?  no.. .it isn’t.  so there you go.  Whether you’re a democrat, republican or physiocrat you have to compare trying to help vs. nothing…. and choose trying to help.

Unless you hate children….

you don’t….hate…children…. do you?

(this may be the last political post… more on that later)