[Vision2020] Health care {insurance} reform passed

[Garrett Clevenger]

Andreas,


Do you know if health care providers are obligated to report non-insured patients?


Are they allowed to care for people who are not insured?


Thanks,
Garrett Clevenger

--- On Thu, 3/25/10, Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Health care {insurance} reform passed
To: "Garrett Clevenger" <garrettmc at verizon.net>
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
Date: Thursday, March 25, 2010, 1:29 AM




How in the world is anybody, let alone the country, supposed to keep this straight?


The actual law, as it'll be eventually codified, is incredibly intricate. It's what courts and agencies need when they pull out parts of it and deal with them on a piecemeal basis, and it's hammered out by committee staffers long after the actual work of legislation is done. That level of detail is necessary to ensure uniform enforcement by thousands of people in fifty states, very few of whom actually have contact with the "home office." It's also triple-spaced with 1.5" margins, in 14 point font, so septuagenarian Congressmen can actually read it.


What the government actually uses to set policy is, however, much less detailed. Most Congressmen deal with summaries of policy and descriptions of how the policy is intended to work. The interrelations between all the moving parts are assembled from those summaries. In this case, the main documents involved are the chairman's marks, which are much easier to read. This, for instance, is the text from Baucus's chairman's mark that corresponds to the citation from the bill:

"Exemptions from the excise tax will be made for individuals where the full premium of the lowest cost option available to them (net of subsidies and employer contribution, if any) exceeds ten percent of their AGI [adjusted gross income]."


Some of this (like the step up in subsidies from ten to eight percent of AGI) has changed since the bill passed Congress. Summaries provided by nonpartisan groups, or the chairman's mark itself, if you're willing to deal with some outdated information, are probably the best source to engage with the material directly.


Hope that helps.
-- ACS
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