Health Care Reform: Reporting Back after SHARE's Roundtable Discussion
Last Thursday, SHARE held a panel discussion on health care reform. Some interesting issues were raised that might have an impact on people dealing with breast or ovarian cancer and other serious diseases.
Of course there's no final legislation yet; the Senate is now debating a bill that, if it passes, will need to be reconciled with the House bill that passed weeks ago. So no one can say yet what a final bill will include.
But the speakers at SHARE's event were able to lay out the broad strokes of the reform, and to raise several important issues about the bills. In this space over the next several days, I'll highlight some of these issues. The speakers were Dick Gottfried, NY State Assembly Member and Chair of the Committee on Health; Mark Scherzer, Legislative Counsel to New Yorkers for Accessible Health Coverage (NYFAHC); Heidi Siegfried, Director of Health Policy at NYFAHC; Fran Visco, President of the National Breast Coalition; and Karen Orloff Kaplan, CEO of the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance.
Today, I'll describe some very broad topics that were addressed at the talk. Since the legislation is currently being debated, everything is subject to change. If you know about any changes, please provide updates by leaving comments here and feel free to do so as the debate continues.
Here are the broad outlines:
The current employer-based health insurance system will remain essentially in place, and universal coverage will not be achieved. The existing system will not be overturned, but will be used as the basis for expanding coverage. There will be penalties and tax incentives motivating employers to provide coverage, and there will be attempts to make individual coverage more accessible. But between six and eight percent of the population will remain uninsured.
Some of the proposed federal changes might offer fewer benefits and less generous rules than New York currently offers and might mean higher costs for the state. I'll explain this more in later posts, but the important thing to know is that New York already has some fairly progressive health insurance rules and benefits compared to other states.
Under both bills, individuals not covered by group plans would be required to buy insurance. If they don't purchase individual plans, they'll have to pay penalties (penalty amounts are different in the Senate and House bills). But there will be exemptions to those penalties if premiums are too high a percentage of personal income.
Check back within the next few days to find out some of the good things that might come from federal health insurance reform. (At least they sound like good things.) And feel free to leave comments!
Posted December 7, 2009.
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