Hello Friends,
This evening House Representative Elijah Cummings held a Town Hall Meeting Teleconference on Healthcare Reform. This was a wonderful opportunity for constituents to learn more specific information about the House Healthcare Reform bill and to ask questions of Representative Cummings. Below is a summary of the questions and answers along with some polling data regarding the urgent need for passage of healthcare reform. Some of these questions may help you better understand what is happening with Healthcare Reform and allow you an opportunity to offer feedback before the House will takes up the Healthcare bill again in September. If you have additional questions or wish to leave Representative Cummings a voice mail message with your comments, please visit
www.house.gov/cummings or dial (410) 685-9199. By all means, please share this information far and wide and especially in Representative Cummings' district.
The Town Hall Meeting began with Representative Cummings making it clear that if any one is satisfied with his or her current healthcare insurance, he or she can keep it, but that a public healthcare program is another option to make healthcare more accessible and affordable. The House version of the healthcare program adds better coverage, security of health coverage in the event of a job loss or change, offers preventive care such as mammogram screenings, allows small businesses to choose quality and affordable plans for employees, prevents insurance companies from denying coverage of pre-existing conditions, offers major tax incentives to small businesses (current system costs 20% more than bigger businesses).
In addition, Representative Cummings explained that approximately 4,000 seniors will be able to avoid the donut hole in Medicare Part D prescription coverage, approximately 1,000 will escape bankruptcies due to healthcare costs, and about 60,000 people will gain access to high quality healthcare insurance. The meeting was then opened up to questions as summarized below:
Q: Residents in a retirement home wonders what will happen to Medicare Part D and if it is possible for insurance companies to drop individuals who are insured causing them to join the public program when they do not wish to?
A: If you like your current health insurance provider/plan, you can keep it. The creation of a public healthcare program will not force companies to drop enrollees; your medicare plan will remain in tact, but the donut hole will be eliminated. Representative Cummings further explained that a public health program will level the playing field and make it possible for 47,000 million people who are currently without insurance, to have insurance.
Q: How will premiums affect medicare?
A: If you stick with Medicare, the co-payment will be eliminated under the current draft of the healthcare bill. The emphasis is on prevention and the healthcare bill encourages more preventable care. For instance, obesity, diabetes, and certain other diseases are areas where the focus can be on prevention and wellness and that will save money. Under the current Medicare Part D plan, the donut hole will no longer exist as well. The donut hole is where coverage for prescriptions stop after a certain dollar amount is reached. The insured must then pay out-of-pocket expenses for prescriptions up to another level of certain dollars. That creates the donut hole that people cannot afford and they must do without medications. This healthcare public plan bill will eliminate that donut hole.
Q: On Page 16 of the current draft of the bill, the language says you can keep coverage unless you change jobs and that you would not have the option for private health insurance. Will we see the bill before the house takes a final vote?
A: Portability of health coverage is assured through COBRA or the Exchange for private or public insurance and that makes it possible to still have insurance as you go from job to job. If an employee cannot afford COBRA which allows for the employee to pay the premium for the medical insurance after a job loss, but most employees cannot afford to make those premium payments, the employee is guaranteed he or she can do so in the Exchange and keep insurance.
Representative Cummings will hold another Town Hall Meeting about the final bill product before the House votes. There are actually three committees working on this healthcare bill plus the Senate and then there will be a conference and then the final product so there is time before it goes for a final vote, too.
Q: Will illegal immigrants be covered in the healthcare public plan? Will there be specific language to exclude them?
A: The CBO approximates that 5.6 million illegal immigrants will be included, but under Section 246, no federal dollars will be spent to cover illegal immigrants and information stating otherwise is false. It is indeed a good idea to have specific language added for this issue about the healthcare coverage of illegal immigrants. Thank you.
Q: Will this healthcare public plan have a cap? Will there be penalties imposed for individuals who pose a health risk such as obese people?
A: Half of the 47 million people without insurance are employees and their families of small businesses. Small businesses pay 18% more than larger businesses because they don't have a pool to go into. Under this public plan, nobody will be penalized, but the plan encourages healthy living and prevention. The urgency is to cover everyone.
Q: Will you, Representative Cummings, consider enrolling in the public healthcare plan?
A: Representative Cummings will certainly consider enrolling himself and his family in the plan. The public healthcare plan will bring efficiency and sufficiency to healthcare delivery. It will reduce visits to the emergency room which costs approximately $1,100 each person on each visit and it will reduce costly underwriting expenses, too.
Q: How many employees qualify as a small business? Can they pay into the Exchange?
A: Twenty (20) employees or less make up a small business. The Exchange is made up of both private and public insurance providers so employees can choose from within that Exchange and employers can pay on a sliding scale. This gives small businesses the incentive to provide benefits and to exempt businesses with earnings less than $500,000 from any penalty.
Under the current healthcare system, there is an urgent need for competition. This is not an attempt at socialism, but this healthcare crisis in America is bigger than us because it is also for the next generation. We must do it right and do it well.
Q: Will Veterans' benefits be affected?
A: No.
Q: When will we see what is actually kept in the healthcare bill and what was taken out?
A: A copy of the current draft will be available Friday, July 31, 2009, at any of my offices (Annapolis, Downtown Baltimore, Washington); however, a vote won't be until September.
Q: There is a concern of middle-class taxes increasing and very little time for constituents to review the healthcare plan. Will there be a "comment" period before passage?
A: There have been 79 hearings and three committees to date since the democrats took over. During the Bush Administration, you may recall, that 6 million children were without health coverage and the children's healthcare bill was vetoed two times by former President Bush. Just as President Obama has stated, the urgency to pass healthcare reform is NOW. Approximately 14,000 people every day lose health insurance or are denied or become more sick which results in access to affordable and quality healthcare being denied.
Everybody will not like any solution, but we must go forward for the benefit of everybody and this is not new and it is necessary. More and more of your paycheck resources go to healthcare costs and healthcare must be made better, efficient, and affordable, and accessible. This is the ultimate aim.
Q: Who will be making decisions (hopefully, not the bureaucracy like social security)?
A: You will find the US will be better off with healthcare reform in the long run. One of the other concerns about the current healthcare system is the problem with Gender Rating. This is when private insurance companies charge women 40 percent more than men in premiums. There are just a lot of inefficiencies and we will get it right together, but we have to abandon the mediocrity of the current health system which has been broken. We can do better with our resources.
Do you have any questions about Healthcare Reform? Contact Representative Cummings and ask away or just drop a note thanking him for holding a Town Hall Meeting!
POLL RESULTS:
61% of callers are very satisfied with their current access to healthcare (Physicians, etc.)
39% of callers very unsatisfied with current healthcare system
88% believe insurance companies should not deny pre-existing conditions
Town Hall Meeting held by House Representative Elijah Cummings
Visit
www.house.gov/cummings Call (410) 685-9199
Visit Healthcare For America Now at
www.healthcareforamericanow.org for updates
Agnes B. Levine is the Author of
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Wednesday, July 29th 2009 at 10:42PM
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