A Baker's Dozen of Lesser Known Benefits of Health Care Reform
March 21, 2010
Here are 13 lesser known but great benefits of health care reform:
- It includes significant help for seniors, increasing access, expanding coverage, extending significant prescription drug discounts, and lowering premiums while extending Medicare’s solvency.
- It significantly increases the number of primary care doctors in America and includes new investments in medical training.
- It cracks down on health care fraud by enhancing screening procedures for health care providers.
- It increases the adoption tax credit and adoption access.
- It provides for an ERISA waiver that in a few years will allow states to experiment with new systems – including public options.
- It reforms rating rules so that small employers will no longer pay higher premiums if they have employees with higher health costs due to age or sickness.
- It increases payments for rural providers.
- It makes generic drugs more affordable and provides increased competition for name brand drugs.
- It creates a framework to promote increased quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries, allowing doctors to earn more based on results they achieve for their patients.
- It improves ability to keep insurance when people switch between jobs, providing employees with the flexibility required to start new businesses and pursue new opportunities.
- It provides grants for states to establish health insurance consumer assistance, provided increased responsiveness to complaints concerning health insurance coverage.
- It includes interim coverage almost immediately for those in high risk pools who have pre-existing conditions.
- It makes significant investments in community health centers to double the number of patients with clinic access over 5 years.
Issues:
Healthcare
Seniors
Social Justice