House Passes Health Care Reform Bill
The biggest story in the country right now is the health care bill passed by the House of Representatives over the weekend.
The debate over how health care reform should be handled has been raging for months – the Wall Street Journal calls the talks over the weekend “theatrical” even.
But after all the talk – much of which fell along party lines – a health care reform bill is moving onto the Senate. Detaisl of the bill from the WSJ:
The measure spends $1.05 trillion over a decade to provide health insurance to an additional 36 million Americans and creates a new public insurance plan by 2013. It requires most Americans to carry insurance, creates a new exchange where they can shop for it and gives the lowest earners tax credits to help them pay for it.
What do you think of this plan? The word out of the papers is that the plan won’t survive intact in the Senate, where Republicans, some Democrats and some Indepedents disagree with much of it. President Obama said he wants a bill by the end of the year, but this version narrowly passed the House and will face a more difficult road in the Senate.
What provisions do you think are absolute must-haves for the final health care bill? We’ve written on here before about the problems with “pre-existing conditions,” complicated billing and lack of real coverage for even the insured.
We’ll keep you posted as this bill moves along, and see if changes are really on the way, or if medical debt will continue to build up as before.