Immediate changes if health bill passed
The House will soon vote on the health care bill. If passed, it would change some people's lives right away. Nancy Marshall Genzer reports.
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks on health care reform at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. (Allison Shelley-Pool/Getty Images)
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KAI RYSSDAL: There is a vote scheduled in the House for sometime Sunday. Up or down on the health care bill. Assuming the thing does make it to the president's desk, some people's lives are going to start changing right away.
As Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genzer reports.
Nancy Marshall Genzer: If the health care bill passes, insurers wouldn't be able to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, starting almost immediately. That would apply to the O'Reilly family.
Natalie O'Reilly says her daughter, Sophie, has a chronic problem with her right lung.
Natalie O'Reilly: It just kept collapsing, and in doing so, was making her very sick.
The only insurers who will take the O'Reillys wouldn't cover Sophie's lung problems. O'Reilly is cautiously hopeful about the health insurance bill. She's happy that they could get insurance, as long as the premiums were affordable.
There's another provision of the health care bill that would help families. Children would be able to stay on their parents' policies until they were 26. And starting this year, insurance companies couldn't drop people in individual plans, if they got sick.
Jean Marie Abraham is a health care economist at the University of Minnesota. She says it doesn't make sense that insurers can drop sick people now.
Jean Marie Abraham: Insurance is designed to help people when they have a catastrophic health event. And that seems counterintuitive to the purpose of insurance.
Austin Frakt is a health economist at Boston University. He says, in a few years, insurers wouldn't be able to deny anyone coverage because of a pre-existing condition. In the mean time, people denied insurance could get coverage through a high-risk pool.
Austin Frakt: So they're doing what can be done easily and inexpensively right away, and things that require more set-up and are most costly have been pushed out a few years.
Of course, the whole plan will be pushed off a cliff, if Congress doesn't pass the health care bill. If the House passes the bill Sunday, it should land in the Senate next week.
In Washington, I'm Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.
Comments
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From San Antonio, TX, 03/22/2010
This is the first step like the Articles of Confederation. It isn't perfect and no one will remember who championed for the sort of fix for health care. Hopefully we can have a good health bill down the road that realizes Americans use more health care above other nations just because we're fatter and live worse. I'm hoping to see quality lunches in my kid's school and more public transportation projects.
From Saint Paul, MN, 03/21/2010
I agree that college students are still pretty much dependents. A good reason to cover people until they are 26 is so that veterans can stay on their parents plans. This would have been helpful for me. Thanks to the University of Minnesota I have affordable health care now. However, I was unable to afford health care for the first two years after I was discharged. Being able to stay on my parents plan would have been great.
From GA, 03/20/2010
You mean the old 10th amendment argument? The problem is that we've been giving the Federal Government the #1 spot for quite a while now whether for Liberal or Conservative gains. States can't exactly opt out of SS or the Patriot Act. What you'll probably see working better are the states opting out of the program. The Fed could pull money away from those states in response but can't really do much else if the state really gets stubborn. That'll actually be something interesting to see: half the states opting in while the other half opt out then watch to see how both do. Of course, I can only say that easily because Georgia's Senate is currently holding back it's 'opt-out' and I'm hoping it stays held back so I don't have to move just to obtain good health care.
From Milan, MI, 03/19/2010
The other thing that will begin immediately is taxes to pay for it, while government expenditures won't begin for several years. Any benefits that begin immediately will be unfunded mandates.
And all of this presumes, of course, that the law ever goes into effect. Since it has several provisions varying from dubious constitutionality to blatant unconstitutionality, the current plan to pass it is similarly unconstitutional, and several states plan to challenge the law in court as soon as it is passed, I don't think that's a reasonable assumption.
03/19/2010
You know, I am a conservative republican and even I know that the industry itself is partly if not mostly to blame. We cannot simply say government runned,because it will be no more government runned as the army is government runned, yet private contracting companies do all the work. Let's be real, I came across this article that details why the industry is at fault because of their business structure:
http://bit.ly/91CKGN
From GA, 03/19/2010
26 I believe is a mix of matters:
up to 18 is well, self explanitory.
4 years after (22) is college. Note that just about everything marks a college student as still dependent.
The last 4 years is probably based on the fact that it takes a while for many people to get into their careers deep enough to get a great health plan. As such, they can use the plan their family has until then.
Remember it's about 'when you can get great insurance', not 'how long are you relying on your family. Those don't end up with the same answers
From San Jose, CA, 03/19/2010
"Children would be able to stay on their parent's policies until they're 26"
The above line may look good to win support for the health care bill. However, no one is a "child" after 18. A 25 year-old is an adult.
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