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Dear Mr. Kalasho:
I thought you might appreciate knowing
that Thursday afternoon the Senate passed important health care reform
legislation.
This bill, the Health Care and
Education Reconciliation Act (H.R.4872), is the second and final step by
Congress and the president to enact necessary health care reform measures.
This legislation now must be approved by the House of Representatives, which
will likely occur Thursday evening, and signed into law by President Obama.
The first step in this process, the enactment of the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (P.L.111-148), took place earlier this week. Together,
this landmark package will vastly improve access to and the affordability of
health care for millions of Americans.
President Obama signed the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act into law this past Tuesday. Immediately,
small businesses got a tax cut to help defray the costs of providing
insurance to their employees. Within three months, people with pre-existing
conditions will have access to a special fund to help cover the gap until
insurance exchanges, where they can obtain coverage, become operational. And
retiree health plans will qualify for a reinsurance program to help lower
costs. In October, the federal government will begin helping states set up
agencies to help consumers choose new health plans or to challenge unfair
decisions by their current insurance plan. Eventually, these agencies will
assist consumers enrolling in the insurance exchanges where millions of
people will find dependable coverage that meets minimum quality standards at
a price they are more likely to afford.
Within six months, insurance reforms
will begin to take hold. New health plans will be required to let women see
an ob-gyn without seeking insurance company approval. They will be
prohibited from denying coverage to children based on pre-existing
conditions and required to allow children to remain on their parents’
policies until age 26. Health plans will have to provide preventive care
without co-pays or deductibles, and they will be barred from setting
lifetime coverage limits. These are historic improvements in our health care
system, and they will take place within the first six months after the
enactment of this legislation.
With the passage of the Health Care
and Education Reconciliation Act (H.R.4872) further improvements to the
health care reform bill were made, improvements that many called for so
loudly during our December debate. Among other measures, this reconciliation
bill will provide equitable Medicaid funding for all states, instead of a
select few, will close the Medicare prescription drug “doughnut hole” that
hurts so many seniors, and will cut the deficit by an additional $143
billion dollars.
In one sense, the health care debate
that came to a close this week has been going on for more than a year. But
in another sense, it has been going on for a century. Presidents and members
of Congress from both parties, seeing health care costs continually rise,
have grappled with this issue ever since President Theodore Roosevelt. Yet,
attempts at reform have largely fallen short. They have foundered for many
reasons: the subject is personal and complex; the timing has been wrong; the
politics have been difficult; and leaders on all sides have failed to find
the compromises that would have enabled them to move forward. But, the
recurring theme is that time and again, reformers have failed to overcome
the enormous obstacles that those who profit from the status quo have been
able to erect. And because we have fallen short in the past, Americans today
face a health care system that costs too much and too often delivers too
little.
The health insurance industry has
dominated health care decisions in this country for too long. I voted in
favor of this historic legislation to finish the task of bringing landmark
change to health care in America.
You may be interested to read my full
statement, which is available on my website, at [http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=323359].
Sincerely,
Carl Levin
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