Victory!
The health reform legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by the President will make health care work for our country by lowering costs for Americans and once and for all level the playing field between American families and insurance companies.
We've been working for health care reform at the national level
because the current system
is
broken and the insurance industry is profiting at the expense of
Americans. It's time for reform, and young people need to be heard in
the debate.
Our priority has been to make health care affordable.
The reform bill includes cost-cutting ideas from both parties, many of
which were featured in our own research. In the years to come, this bill
will begin to lower costs by delivering better, smarter care and
increasing competition in the insurance markets. It's estimated that
these reforms will cut $1.4 trillion off the deficit over the next two
decades.
Most importantly, this legislation takes unprecedented
steps to lower costs for families and small businesses. And at long
last, insurers will be prohibited from using pre-existing conditions,
errors on forms, and lifetime or yearly caps to drop your coverage or
price it out of reach.
This victory did not come easily. The
insurance industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars to stop reform.
But we won - because of people like you.
In recent months,
student across the country shared their stories, made calls, signed
petitions, and talked to their family and friends about these issues.
And our team of volunteers, interns, and staff worked tirelessly to
pass these reforms.
In the final hours leading up to the
vote, our staff in D.C. tracked down representatives to deliver nearly
1,000 letters students submitted over the weekend.
Congratulations
and thanks for all you've done!
Here are the immediate benefits that this new law will provide American consumers this year:
• Prohibits pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
• Prohibits dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;
• Lowers seniors prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole;
• Offers tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
• Eliminates lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;
• Requires plans to cover an enrollee's dependent children until age 26;
• Requires new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations;
• Ensures consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
• Offers uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions the choice of enrolling in insurance provided through a temporary high-risk pool;
• Requires premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.
