More Health Insurance Info

The Senate health reform bill will:


-- Extend coverage to 31 million Americans, the largest expansion of coverage since the creation of Medicare.

-- Ensure that you can choose your own doctor.

-- Finally stop insurance companies from denying coverage due to a pre-existing condition.

-- Make sure you will never be charged exorbitant premiums on the basis of your age, health, or gender.

-- Guarantee you will never lose your coverage just because you get sick or injured.

-- Protect you from outrageous out-of-pocket expenditures by establishing lifetime and annual limits.

-- Allow young people to stay on their parents' coverage until they're 26 years old.

-- Create health insurance exchanges, or "one-stop shops" for individuals purchasing insurance, where insurance companies are forced to compete for new customers.

-- Lower premiums for families, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office -- especially for struggling folks who will receive subsidies.

-- Help small businesses provide health care coverage to their employees with tax credits and by allowing them to purchase coverage through the exchanges.

-- Improve and strengthen Medicare by eliminating waste and fraud (without cutting basic benefits), beginning to close the Medicare Part D donut hole, and extending the life of the Medicare trust fund.

-- Create jobs by reining in costs -- fostering competition, reducing waste and inefficiency, and starting to reward doctors and hospitals for quality, not quantity, of care.

-- Cut the deficit by over $130 billion in the next 10 years.