Jezebel 
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New York, 9:54 AM
Sun Nov 22
23 posts in the last 24 hours
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[www.nytimes.com]
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#tips
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#tips
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Can someone help an English expat get her head around this - what is an 'exchange'? And if your healthcare comes with your job, you still get to choose a plan with abortion, right? Or does your employer choose? Also, side issue, this 97% thing - who are the 3% who won't get the option for free healthcare?
11/19/09
Here you go:
c) Exceptions-
`(1) DEPENDENTS- Subsection (a) shall not apply to any individual for any taxable year if a deduction is allowable under section 151 with respect to such individual to another taxpayer for any taxable year beginning in the same calendar year as such taxable year.
`(2) NONRESIDENT ALIENS- Subsection (a) shall not apply to any individual who is a nonresident alien.
`(3) INDIVIDUALS RESIDING OUTSIDE UNITED STATES- Any qualified individual (as defined in section 911(d)) (and any qualifying child residing with such individual) shall be treated for purposes of this section as covered by acceptable coverage during the period described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of section 911(d)(1), whichever is applicable.
`(4) INDIVIDUALS RESIDING IN POSSESSIONS OF THE UNITED STATES- Any individual who is a bona fide resident of any possession of the United States (as determined under section 937(a)) for any taxable year (and any qualifying child residing with such individual) shall be treated for purposes of this section as covered by acceptable coverage during such taxable year.
`(5) RELIGIOUS CONSCIENCE EXEMPTION-
`(A) IN GENERAL- Subsection (a) shall not apply to any individual (and any qualifying child residing with such individual) for any period if such individual has in effect an exemption which certifies that such individual is a member of a recognized religious sect or division thereof described in section 1402(g)(1) and an adherent of established tenets or teachings of such sect or division as described in such section.
11/19/09
1. An exchange is a system where different insurance companies can sell their plans to people who don't have employer coverage and some proposals will also let small businesses purchase through the exchange. It will have rules limiting what types of plans can be offered and how premiums can be determined.
2. If your health care comes with your job, you often have no choice at all. Many employers offer just one plan and you take it or leave it. Other employers offer a choice of 2-4 plans that cost different amounts. But your employer is choosing the plans offered and often, they don't understand what they are doing and just taking what the insurance broker tells them is in their price range.
3. Health reform is not providing 97% of Americans with free health care. Only people with extremely low incomes will get free health care. Everybody else will have to pay or have their employer pay. Most employers only pay a portion of the health premium. It can easily cost people $400 or $500 or even more a month to insure their families through their employer plan. The reform proposals will offer government subsidies to people with low incomes, but many will get subsidies that only pay for part of the cost.
4. The reason some people won't get coverage is that they still have to pay for it and they won't or can't pay for it, that some states won't have exchanges so affordable coverage won't be available, or they are undocumented immigrants who don't have employer coverage.
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Now I understand it more, I don't get why we're celebrating this. It seems like in many cases, a woman's access to abortion will still be in someone else's hands - her employer's.
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Insurance you have through the military has never covered elective abortion. Through Medicaid, only a few states offer coverage beyond life endangerment, incest or rape.
This is a great tool, click on the links to the left to see the key difference in the bills: [www.nytimes.com]
But you're right - we're "celebrating" this because Reid is a Mormon and our expectations were low...
11/19/09
Bravo Latoya and Jez.
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While their coverage may be more inflammatory than explanatory, I think the fact that Congress has been debating this bill in the public eye, rather than as a footnote to news coverage of the executive office, probably had a significant effect on bringing both parties closer to their base in the discussions.
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#tips
11/19/09
Please or please, just this once, let reasonable compromise and sensible thought prevail in my country's government.
Amen,
-BB
11/19/09
He is also ripping the exchange to shreds by creating an exchange in every state rather than one national exchange. So people who live in Maine, Rhode Island and Delaware won't have the opportunity to participate in an exchange with as large a pool as people who live in California and New York.
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And two equal benefit plans offered by the same company will not be taxed similarly; the more expensive - PPO for example as opposed to HMO - will be taxed.
This is my understanding of Reid's bill - I'm still reading...
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It is not just that a PPO is more expensive than an HMO. A PPO in Maine or Southern Texas will probably be more expensive than the exact same PPO in California. Because health care costs more in Maine and Southern Texas. The exact same PPO will cost more to an employer who happens to employ multiple people with HIV or people getting transplants than it does to an employer who employs primarily health individuals averaging about 30 years in age. Insurance charges more if the people use the insurance more.
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But I see what you're saying and I found this and read a bit more:
[T]he Finance Committee... approved a 40% excise tax on insurance companies that offer "Cadillac" health plans that cost more than $8,000 for individuals.
Labor unions and other critics say the Cadillac tax would hit too many middle-income consumers whose health premiums are high because they live in high-cost areas, not because the plans offer luxury benefits.
Reid, who is facing a tough reelection campaign with the strong backing of organized labor, is exploring ways to scale back the Cadillac tax. He is considering the Medicare payroll tax hike to make up for the revenue that would be lost if the Cadillac tax applied to fewer plans.
[www.latimes.com]
I still think Reid's bill is superior to the House bill as a whole. And it's reassuring to know that he's working toward an even better bill.
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As far as I can tell, wonks feel like costs can be contained by one or both of these things: consumer spending and delivery reform. Consumer spending advocates are under the impression that many employer-covered folks spend too much on health care (not the ones in the trouble zone) because they have a tax-free health care piggy bank. Non-group types have to pay taxes on insurance, so each dollar of income they would allocate to health care is worth less. This Cadillac tax thing was an attempt to capture these alleged people with posh plans so they won't order them anymore and thereby stop inflating prices.
But now, this was just a poor man's attempt at yanking away the employer tax exemption, which creates this imbalance in purchasing power and keeps people chained to their jobs. It would have a consumption effect by catching all the "Cadillac" types, leave the non-group people no worse off, and would level the consumer playing field, freeing people from their jobs' group plans to pursue the public plan (pleasepleaseplease). What I gathered was if employees, union or sick or otherwise, get hosed by this tax, you lob some subsidies at them. And as with the mandate, all its possible flaws aside, this revocation would drum up some tax income for the program. But oh, Barack Obama must never impose any sort of tax on anyone making less than $250k or the universe will explode.
I know you and I disagreed (amicably, happy to say) about this earlier because you are in favor of total-market tax exemption (non-group people included, that is), thereby liberalizing the consumer market and saving the high cost types from getting hosed. As I recall, you said the entire bill would be paid for, tax-wise, with wealthy income tax hikes. But then, nothing is done about consumer spending, so in theory no cost-curve bending and no increased efficiency. We'll be playing millionaire tax-hike catch-up with the cost curve until we run out of rich people.
So okay, fine, maybe I'll entertain the idea that consumer spending has little to do with rising costs, but that means the legislature has to pass another bill following this one focusing on cost reduction. Maybe some of the stuff this Leonhardt guy proposes will be on the menu.
[www.nytimes.com]
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I think I need to sit down for a minute.
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Sometimes, I feel like this country is on the brink of another 1968. Everything in the past few years just seems like it's unravelling and the culture wars have gotten to a point of dangerous aggression.
11/19/09
Basically, conservatives have made the historical accident of the shanking of the working class and the liberalization of the lives of non-hegemonic white males a cause and effect relationship, when there's probably not even a correlation. That's why most conservative rhetoric sounds idiotic. Gay marriage and NAFTA have nothing to do with each other, but working class whites can't do anything about globalization. They CAN, however, shank a gay person because their dreams were wrecked long ago by god knows what arcane piece of legislation passed by Reagan while he was wavin' the flag (or sadly, by Bill Clinton triangulating).
As long as people with money need abortion to upset despairing white people, abortion will be an issue. People with money (health insurance companies) needed to upset old white people. Hence, death panels and now abortion.
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[reid.senate.gov]
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@ElleL: I was going to send this:
#tips
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#tips
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Is it snowing white kittens?
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