CNN 2009-12-27

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Of course, it's the heart of this bill. Both bills, the House and Senate bills will create these new insurance exchanges, sort of like farmer's markets if you will where private insurance companies would compete to offer coverage¹. There would be subsidies² offered by the federal government for families that earn up to 400 percent poverty. That's 88,000 dollars for a family afore. So even, you know, healthy middle-class incomes would be eligible³ for help afford in these policies. The hope, of course, is that there would be enough competition that premiums⁴ would be affordable⁵. That's the idea, of course, behind this public option that's in the House bill, but the hope is that there will be enough competition that people will be able to afford these policies and there will be help for them to purchase these policies, no preexisting condition is out there.

OK, and Maggie has a question that resonates in some of the different ways. People wanting to know, "How does this affect a senior on Medicare?"

Yes, of course, during the Senate debate, you would… you might have felt that this bill was all about Medicare. There was so much talk about this, you know, 400 billion dollars in Medicare cuts. There is actually some new benefits for seniors on Medicare. There is new preventive benefits or at least no-cost preventive benefits for seniors on Medicare and a closing, a gradual closing of that donut hole in the Medicare prescription⁶ drug benefit. Right now if you get up to a certain amount, you keep paying your premiums but you don't get any more coverage. And of course, there are some reductions in payments to health care providers under Medicare. But we've seen those before and it seems unlikely that there will be any benefit reductions unless you are in a private Medicare advantage plan. Those are the private HMOs and some people who are now getting extra benefits might see some of those scaled back. But in general probably not much change for the worse or a little bit change for the better if you...