2010How ghastly! Twenty-six year olds allowed to have health care! Lifetime coverage limits made illegal! Added funds to states to help pay for Medicaid! Insurance for preventative services!
2011
- Several consumer protection rules took effect in September, including allowing children to stay on their parents' health insurance plan until age 26, banning lifetime coverage limits and ending denial of coverage for children because of pre-existing health conditions.
- A temporary insurance program was created to help provide coverage to "high risk" patients with pre-existing conditions.
- States that opted to add low-income people and families to their Medicaid rolls who had not previously qualified received additional federal funds.
- All new insurance plans were required to cover preventative services such as mammograms without charging a deductible, co-pay or coinsurance starting in September.
- Small businesses are now eligible for tax credits to help provide insurance benefits to their workers that are worth up to 35 percent of the insurance payment.
- Health insurance companies -- including Aetna Inc and WellPoint Inc -- face new limits that call for at least 85 cents of every premium dollar to go toward medical costs, with 15 cents for overhead and salaries.
- Small group or individual plans must spend at least 80 cents per dollar on care.
- Drugmakers must offer a 50 percent discount on brand name drugs for elderly or disabled Americans enrolled in Medicare's Part D prescription drug plans who also hit the so-called "doughnut hole" coverage gap. Generic drugs will also cost less.
I shudder at the thought of small businesses being afflicted with tax credits, and that insurance companies are now required to spend most of their money on actually giving health care to people!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please remember that the purpose of Editorial Explanations is to explain and to expand knowledge, rather than to engage in any partisan bickering. All cartoonists are completely correct, in their own worlds.