US President Barack Obama’s sweeping healthcare overhaul — now looking like a real possibility — should give uninsured Americans options they’ve never had before.
Consumers will face a complicated lineup of health plan choices, however, some costly.
Obama on Wednesday hailed a tentative deal by Democratic senators to give millions of Americans the option of signing up for private plans sponsored by the federal employee health system, which covers some 8 million, including members of Congress.
The compromise, which also offers people aged 55 to 64 the option of buying into the federal Medicare program for the elderly, appears to have given Democrats a way around the deal-breaker issue of a new government plan to compete with private carriers. Senators continued to debate for a 10th day, with Democrats pushing to pass the bill by Christmas.
The 2,074-page Senate bill will grow even longer as amendments are considered, but the basic outlines of the legislation most likely to pass are becoming clearer.
The overhaul will be phased in slowly, over the next three to four years, but eventually all Americans will be required to carry coverage or face a tax penalty, except in cases of financial hardship. Insurers won’t be able to deny coverage to people with health problems, or charge them more or cut them off.
Most of the uninsured will be covered, but not all. As many as 24 million people would remain uninsured in 2019, many of them otherwise eligible Americans who can’t afford the premiums.
Lawmakers propose to spend nearly US$1 trillion over 10 years to provide coverage, most of the money going to help lower-income people, but a middle-class family of four making US$66,000 would still have to pay about 10 percent of its income in premiums, not counting co-payments and deductibles.
No dramatic changes are in store for most people who get coverage through their jobs — about 60 percent of those under age 65. The Congressional Budget Office says the bill wouldn’t have a major effect on premiums under employer plans, now about US$13,000 a year.
Parents would be able to keep dependent children on their coverage longer, age 27, in the House of Representatives bill.
One benefit for people with employer coverage is hard to quantify — it should be easier to get health insurance if they lose their jobs.
The real transformation under the legislation would come for those who now have the most trouble finding and keeping coverage — people who buy their own insurance or work for small businesses.
About 30 million could pick from an array of plans through new insurance supermarkets called exchanges.
Some people’s taxes would go up.
To pay for expanded coverage, the House bill imposes a 5.4 percent income tax surcharge on individuals making more than US$500,000 and families earning more than US$1 million. The Senate slaps a 40 percent tax on insurance plans with premiums above US$8,500 for individual coverage, and US$23,000 for family plans, among other levies.
The rest of the financing would come mainly from cuts in federal payments to insurers, hospitals, home healthcare agencies and other medical providers serving the Medicare program.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not