red states rule
01-17-2011, 11:17 AM
The Obama administration believes if at first you don't succeed, try try again to get those death panels up and running
Should health insurers have to cover treatment of Lyme disease? What about speech therapy for autistic children? Or infertility treatments?
Can they limit the number of chemotherapy rounds allowed cancer patients? Or restrict the type of dialysis offered to people with kidney disease?
This week an independent advisory group convened by the Obama administration launched what is likely to be a long and emotional process to answer such questions.
It's hard to overstate the stakes.
Under the new health-care overhaul law, beginning in 2014 all new insurance plans for individuals and small businesses will have to include a package of minimum "essential benefits" falling into 10 general categories - ranging from hospitalization, to prescription drugs, to rehabilitative and habilitative services. But Congress largely left it to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to decide how detailed to make the essential benefits package and what exactly to put in it.
Draw up a package that is too bare-bones, and millions of Americans could be deprived of meaningful health coverage when they need it most - undercutting a central goal of the health-care law. Add in too many expensive benefits and premiums could spike to unaffordable levels.
At a two-day hearing Thursday and Friday held by the Institute of Medicine ,even ardent supporters of the health-care law stressed the dangers of this second scenario: If insurance were to be become too costly, many Americans could decide it makes more sense to pay a penalty rather than comply with the law's requirement that virtually everyone obtain coverage- undermining a cornerstone of the law. Indeed, the law exempts consumers from the mandate to buy insurance if the cost exceeds 8 percent of their income.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/14/AR2011011406172.html
Should health insurers have to cover treatment of Lyme disease? What about speech therapy for autistic children? Or infertility treatments?
Can they limit the number of chemotherapy rounds allowed cancer patients? Or restrict the type of dialysis offered to people with kidney disease?
This week an independent advisory group convened by the Obama administration launched what is likely to be a long and emotional process to answer such questions.
It's hard to overstate the stakes.
Under the new health-care overhaul law, beginning in 2014 all new insurance plans for individuals and small businesses will have to include a package of minimum "essential benefits" falling into 10 general categories - ranging from hospitalization, to prescription drugs, to rehabilitative and habilitative services. But Congress largely left it to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to decide how detailed to make the essential benefits package and what exactly to put in it.
Draw up a package that is too bare-bones, and millions of Americans could be deprived of meaningful health coverage when they need it most - undercutting a central goal of the health-care law. Add in too many expensive benefits and premiums could spike to unaffordable levels.
At a two-day hearing Thursday and Friday held by the Institute of Medicine ,even ardent supporters of the health-care law stressed the dangers of this second scenario: If insurance were to be become too costly, many Americans could decide it makes more sense to pay a penalty rather than comply with the law's requirement that virtually everyone obtain coverage- undermining a cornerstone of the law. Indeed, the law exempts consumers from the mandate to buy insurance if the cost exceeds 8 percent of their income.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/14/AR2011011406172.html