BY-NC-SA House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a $894 billion health care bill Thursday. The bill would extend coverage to 36 million Americans through a mix of subsidies, tax incentives and penalties on individuals and small businesses. Under the bill, the government would sell health insurance, in competition with private insurers. Pelosi said the competition would hold down premium costs, but Republicans said the public plan could eventually drive private insurers from the market. The final package from the House does not have the more liberal vision of a public health insurance option.
In the House bill, as in the Senate version, insurers would have to accept all applicants, regardless of pre-existing conditions and they would not be able to charge higher premiums because a person was sick. The House bill includes a provision letting children stay on their parents’ insurance through the age of 26. A bill approved by the Senate health committee offers a similar provision allowing children to stsay on their parents' insurance through age 25.
President Obama welcomed the House bill as “a historic step forward”. He said it meets two of his criteria. “It is fully paid for and will reduce the deficit in the long term,” he said.
Opponents to the bill were quick to respond to Pelosi's announcement. Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 Republican in the House, said the Democrats’ bill “looks like another freight train of big government with more taxes, more mandates and more spending.” That, he said, is “not what the American people want.”
(via The New York Times)
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