Reform To Health Care And Changes To Expect
One of the primary concerns that came out of every reform introduced by the White House is that the wealthy come out on the short end. For some reason, new bills always seem to depend on the wealthy to pay more and do more. For affluent people, this is a serious issue in that not everyone was born with a silver spoon in the mouth. Some rich people started out poor and worked long, hard years to build an empire so they feel they are being unfairly affected.
In this article, we wanted to address this issue of health care changes for affluent families to determine what, if any impact there will be. When looking at the details of the new health care reform that was just signed into law by President Obama does appear to attack economic inequality. With the number of wealthy people on the rise over the past 30 years, you can imagine the concerns this has raised.
Without doubt, the Medicare program has been underfunded for a long time. Just to bring the hospital insurance program into balance long-term, this program would need a 134% increase on tax rate and 53% cut in spending. Therefore, during the long discussions about the health care reform bill, Medicare received a significant amount of attention in that Congress understood this would be one area hit hard if changes were not made.
One change that has millions of people on Medicare concerned is that to pay for this health care reform, not only are the rich being overly taxed, but also payments to insurers that offer private plans will be reduced. Known as “Medicare Advantage”, this means that doctors and hospitals will start to reduce or stop altogether care to people that depend on Medicare for treatment of health issues or injury.
Major changes to Medicaid have not been seen since 1965 so this is a big deal and then considering that the changes are unlike anything else every passed into law it will be interesting to see exactly how this plays out. One concern that Medicaid had was providing healthcare to so many more people and only having a limited number of free clinics. Obviously, if millions of people will now qualify for Medicaid, there has to be more facilities.
However, with the new health care reform, changes to Medicare would eliminate the over payments. This means the country would save some $132 billion over the next 10 years but it also means that people on Medicare Advantage would begin to see costs increasing and extras being eliminated by as early as 2011. In addition, it is expected by 2011 to see premiums increase. Overall, the new health care reform will cut $400 billion in reimbursements, primarily to hospitals.
One of the health care changes for the uninsured that everyone is having trouble with is the fines. If a person refused to purchase health insurance, an annual penalty of $95 would be due in the year 2014. However, probably one of the best changes that came out of President Obama’s new bill is that people with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied coverage. All of these new health care regulations will go into effect starting 2014 for adults but for children, they start six months to the day that the new Health care Reform Coverage was signed.
The Healthcare GDP: Healthcare is Now One-Sixth of US GDP see how New Jersey Small Business Health Insurance are affected
