Of het verstandig is, vooral in deze tijd is inderdaad de vraag. Maar hier een overzicht van de speerpunten:
COST: $940 billion over 10 years.
COVERAGE: 32 million more covered starting in 2014.
MANDATE: Starting in 2014, everyone must have insurance or pay a fine. The poor are eligible for subsidies.
REFORMS: Starting this year, insurers barred from capping lifetime payouts, denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions, and canceling policies because someone gets sick. Parents can keep kids on their coverage up to age 26. Insurers can’t deny coverage to people with medical problems or charge them more. Insurers cannot charge women more.
DEALS: “Cornhusker kickback” is out, while “Louisiana purchase” is in.
TAXES: Tax on high-cost insurance plans would be delayed until 2018. Lost revenue made up by a 3.8 percent Medicare payroll tax on investment income and wages of individuals making more than $200,000, or married couples above $250,000.
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: Gradually closes the “doughnut hole” coverage gap in Medicare for seniors.
EMPLOYERS: Hit with a fee if the government subsidizes their workers’ coverage.
SUBSIDIES: Tax credits for purchasing insurance.
CHOICE: Small businesses, the self-employed and the uninsured could pick a plan offered through new state-based purchasing pools called exchanges, opening for business in 2014. The exchanges would offer the same kind of purchasing power that employees of big companies benefit from. People working for medium-to-large firms would not see major changes. But if they lose their jobs or strike out on their own, they may be eligible for subsidized coverage through the exchange.
PUBLIC OPTION: No government-run insurance plan but people who sign up for state-run exchanges could purchase plans available to members of Congress. Those plans would be private, but one would have to be nonprofit.
ABORTION: In plans that cover abortion, policyholders would have to pay for it separately, and that money would be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money.
GOP INPUT: Increases in payments to primary-care physicians under Medicaid.
Boston Herald.
"I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself" - Ivan Boesky.
'Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.' - Milton Friedman