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Health Insurance Reform for All Americans
UPDATE: On June 10th, Medicare began sending $250 rebate checks to Illinois seniors who have fallen into the Medicare Part D coverage gap known as the "donut hole." These checks will help those in the donut hole pay for their prescriptions. By the end of the year, roughly 150,000 Illinoisans will have received these checks, which are provided as one of the immediate benefits of the new health care reform law. As a result of the health care law, the donut hole will be cut in half in 2011 and will be completely eliminated by 2020.
More information on the how the law affects seniors in the Medicare donut hole can be found here.
Our nation has completed a 16-month debate about health insurance reform since the election of Barack Obama as our 44th President. The goal has been to bring costs under control, extend access to affordable health insurance to those without insurance, make sure that folks have a fighting chance against insurance companies that turn them down when they need help the most, and make sure Medicare is strong for years to come.
Throughout the debate, I have tried to provide useful information to the people of Illinois so that they could judge the reforms that were under consideration. Now that the President has signed a comprehensive reform bill into law, I am continuing to provide information about the reforms that have been adopted.
With this health reform legislation, we make the commonsense changes that Americans need, with provisions that:
- Give American families protection against insurance company practices that deny them coverage when they need it most. (Specifically, the new law prohibits health insurers from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. [Beginning in 2014, this prohibition would apply to all people regardless of age.] Bans insurance companies from dropping people from coverage when they get sick. Prohibits health insurance companies from placing lifetime caps on coverage.)
- Extend coverage to an additional 32 million Americans over time, bringing us closer to the day when every American has health insurance.
- Make health insurance more affordable to individuals and businesses with the largest tax cut for health care in the history of this country.
- Implement reforms in a fiscally responsible way that start to bring down the cost of health care and that dramatically reduce the federal deficit over time - by $143 billion over the next 10 years and as much as $1.3 trillion in the following decade.
- Promote preventive health care, wellness, and disease prevention to improve our quality of life and reduce overall health care costs.
- Gradually close the prescription drug "donut hole" - the gap in coverage faced by seniors in the Medicare prescription drug program (Medicare Part D.)
- Crack down on waste in Medicare and extend the life of the program by at least 9 years so that seniors can count on Medicare to be there for them when they need it.
- Encourage research that identifies which treatments work best, and under which circumstances, so that patients and their doctors can be fully informed in selecting the right treatment.
- Provide incentives to improve the quality of the health care services we receive.
- Link Medicare payments to improved health outcomes, so that we shift from paying for every service a provider can bill to paying providers to keep people well and restore them to health.
- Expand access to primary care services and encourage medical students and doctors to pursue primary care professions, where the need is greater, rather than surgical specialties that are oversubscribed.
- Improve services in rural areas, where access to care is often limited.
- Improve the quality and coverage of the Medicaid program for low-income Americans.
Many of the questions you may have are answered in the links in the box above. I encourage you to keep reading and learning about this important step forward for American families.
Read more: Frequently asked questions about the new health care law >>
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