The Good
1. It makes insurance companies cover preexisting conditions for children.
2. Even though it is a high risk pool, Americans with preexisting conditions have a chance to buy insurance immediately. In 2014, it will be completely illegal for insurance companies to deny people with preexisting conditions.
3. Immediately prohibits the practice of rescission, which is when an insurance company said they would cover you, should have covered you, but denies payment anyway.
4. Begins to close the "donut hole" for senior citizens' prescription drugs. Essentially Medicare is currently set up so that your cheapest meds are covered, and your most expensive ones are covered, but there is a hole in the middle where meds are not covered. This provision aims to fix that.
5. Offers tax benefits to small businesses to purchase coverage.
6. Eliminates lifetime limits and restricts annual limits on health care coverage.
7. Requires plans to cover dependents until age 26.
8. Requires new plans to cover preventive services without cost sharing.
9. Provides an appeals process for decisions made by insurance companies.
10. Requires insurance companies to spend XX% of the money taken in to go towards health care (not overhead costs).
The Bad
1. Requires (though a fine or tax credit, I think) all Americans to have insurance, or to buy insurance.
2. DOES NOT provide a cheaper public option to buy health insurance.
3. DOES NOT change our current system, where payment is FOR PROFIT. This means that insurance companies are still in charge, and it is their responsibility to to make as much money as possible (bringing in the most money on premiums, and paying out the least bit of money).
4. A provision that would have let the government control how much the insurance companies can increase premiums was taken OUT. While this is questionable on the level of government involvement, but remember that at least we would be able to have a conversation about getting real cost control, which is the main problem for middle class Americans. Taking this provision out means that there is very little the government can do to reform the system, and since we're on it:
5. Does very little overall to regulate insurance companies. This is a problem because most of the good points above can be swept away if the insurance companies fight them, hold them up, or even win out over them. Note numbers 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, and in particular number 9. The fine for, say, denying someone with a preexisting condition is something like $100 a day, I think. If you do the math, that means that it could cost up to $36,500 per year to pay that fine for one person, but if a treatment is $50,000 over one WEEK, including long terms costs for medication, hospital visits, or rehabilitation, which option is the company going to choose?
I know I got a little preachy there are the end, but the main opposition that gets covered by the media is that from right, even though those people like to quote the disapproval for the bill, which SURELY includes several liberal like myself who feel that this is just a giant band-aid over a gaping wound rather a real solution to the problem.
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