* Eliminating the Nebraska FMAP provision and providing significant additional Federal financing to all States for the expansion of Medicaid;
* Closing the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap;
* Strengthening the Senate bill’s provisions that make insurance affordable for individuals and families;
* Strengthening the provisions to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid;
* Increasing the threshold for the excise tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500 and starting it in 2018 for all plans;
* Improving insurance protections for consumers and creating a new Health Insurance Rate Authority to provide Federal assistance and oversight to States in conducting reviews of unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices of insurance plans.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-m ... w/overview
I'm underwhelmed. Closing the donut hole is good. Making health insurance more affordable is fine, but affordable is all quite relative. Fighting fraud, waste and abuse is good. That shouldn't be a special thing though, it should be done all the time. Increasing the threshold for the excise tax is all well and good. It's more likely that only the fairly wealthy will be paying the tax. That last point is the weakest of all. I'd like to see more teeth in that. Of course, wingnuts will go looney because anything Obama does is Socialist.
They really need to look up the definition of Socialism. The only thing I can do at this point is hope that, as some have suggested, this a foot in the door to real health care reform.
