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Congress gives final passage to health care reform bill, adds subsidies, softens penalties, gradually closes "doughnut hole"
OpenCongress.org
More than a year after Congress began their health care reform effort, it officially came to an end Thursday as the Senate and House both gave final votes of approval to the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010. The bill amends the bigger health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, that President Obama signed into law earlier this week.
Some changes the reconciliation bill would make to the new health care law:
- Increases subsidies — Adds more money for helping people who earn under 400% of the Federal Poverty Level and aren’t insured through work to afford insurance. Under the bill that was signed into law, the average subsidy for a person buying insurance on the exchanges would be $5,800. The reconciliation bill ups that to $6,000.
- Closes the Doughnut Hole — the reconciliation bill adds a $250 rebate in 2010 for all Medicare Part D enrollees who enter the gap in prescription drug coverage that currently exists between $2,830 and $6,440 and closes this “doughnut hole” completely by 2020 through gradualy increasing the rebate amount.
- Lifetime and annual limits on coverage are eliminated within six months of the law going into effect.
- Softens individual mandate penalty — Starting in 2014, people without insurance may have to pay a tax penalty under the bill’s individual mandate provision. The reconciliation bill lowers the size of the penalty from $750 to $695 and adds a bigger exemption for people who can’t get insurance due to financial hardship.
- Scales Back the Cadillac Tax — The reconciliation bill delays until 2018 the excise tax on high-cost “Cadillac” health plans and increases the premium threshold for triggering the tax.
- Removes special deals — The health care bill picked up a few sweeteners for specific states along the way on its year-long journey towards becoming law. For the most part, the special deals exempt states from changes in Medicare law. The reconciliation bill eliminates many of these.
- Strengthens Fraud Fighting — Adds $250 million in funding for the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Fund.
- Student Loan Reform — Incorporates much of the Student Loan and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which ends a program that provides government subsidies to student loan companies and use the saving to increase Pell Grants and other scholarship programs.
