A Few Facts of the House Health Care Reform Plan

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/14/house.health.care/index.html

To read the full story of the newly unveiled House Democratic Health Care Reform Plan please follow the above link. The key points of the plan are:

-- A Health Insurance Exchange providing individuals and small business with choices for coverage, including a government-funded public option.

-- No more coverage exclusion for pre-existing conditions.

-- Affordability credits for low- and moderate-income individuals and families, available to those with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or $43,000 for individuals and $88,000 for a family of four.

-- Limits on annual out-of-pocket spending.

-- Expanded Medicaid coverage to individuals and families with incomes at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

-- Required participation by individuals, with a penalty of 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income for non-compliance.

-- Requirement that businesses with payrolls exceeding $250,000 provide their employees with health coverage or contribute up to 8 percent of their payroll on their behalf.

-- A series of measures intended to reduce costs of Medicaid, Medicare and other existing systems.

-- 97% of Americans will be covered by 2015.

-- The bill includes tax surcharges on Americans in the top 1.2 percent of income. It proposes a 5.4 percent surtax on couples earning more than $1 million, a 1.5 percent surtax on couples with income between $500,000 and $1 million, and a 1 percent surtax on joint incomes over $350,000 or individual income over $280,000.

Additions to the above list on msn @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31906493/ns/politics-white_house/

include the following points:

-- Medical providers would be held accountable for quality of care not quantity of tests.

-- A federal council would oversee the public plan.

Big business, the Republicans, and even a few "Conservative Democrats" have already come out against the proposed plan saying their usual slogans of "it will hurt businesses" and "it will hurt insurance companies to have to compete with a public plan".

I will post more details as I find them.