Day 3 of 206- reading the Senate Health Care Bill
January 27, 2010 by davidfisher · Leave a Comment
- be a citizen or be in the US legally
- have no health insurance for at least 6 months
- must have a pre-existing condition
Gives HHS the authority to examine if people in the “immediate access” plans were “dumped” by their prior insurance plans. If HHS determines that the person was “dumped” then they can fine the insurance plan for the amount of health care expenses that were incurred by the individual who was “dumped.”
Examples of “dumping” practices:
- paying someone with money or other incentives to leave the plan
- raising premiums on the “unhealthy”
Gives HHS $5 billion to administer the “immediate access” plan, with a provision allowing them to ask for more.
In 2014, those in the immediate access plans can be transitioned to a plan in the Exchange.
My Thoughts: Gives a lot of power to the federal government (seems to be a theme so far). They will have the ability to probe the history of anyone in the immediate access plan to see if they were unfairly dropped from coverage by a prior insurer. No statute of limitations is outlined, so can the government go back 10 years and then fine the insurance company for 10 years worth of medical expenses for anyone they dropped? And to whom will that money go? It does not appear to go to the individual as reimbursement for their out-of-pocket expenses over those 10 years. Instead it goes to the government. In effect, this is simply a transfer of resources from private insurance companies to the federal government, with no apparent benefit to the uninsured, unless you consider punishment of the company that dropped the individual as a benefit. It’s hard to know how many people will actually qualify for this “immediate access” plan. Only those with a pre-existing condition will qualify, but these were not defined. Does it have to be a pre-existing condition for which a person was turned down by insurance? Or can it be any health condition? If it is any health condition, that would vastly expand the number of people qualifying for immediate access. The final clause in this section states that the bill will supersede any State laws on this issue. Again, more power to Washington Day 3 goes to the Right temporal bone.
