The Health Reform Battle: From Procedure to Policy
posted by Frank Pasquale
Many bloggers have highlighted bits and pieces of the legislation just passed by the House of Representatives. But how do we best understand the bill as a whole? The Obama Administration recently recruited Edward Tufte to visualize the ARRA (which, amazingly enough, many Americans think went entirely to Wall Street). Some savvy media outlets have already explained health reform in accessible formats.
Farhana Hossain at the NYT summarizes the language of the Senate Bill, and how it will change in the coming week(s) if Senate Democrats follow through on their promises and pass the House’s Reconciliation Bill. For example, in the Senate Bill:
Within six months, insurers would be prohibited from denying coverage to children based on pre-existing medical conditions, from placing lifetime dollar limits on coverage and from rescinding coverage when a person becomes sick or disabled. The ban on exclusion based on pre-existing conditions would be extended to every one when the exchanges are operational in 2014.
But the reconciliation bill “would extend the ban on lifetime limits and rescission of coverage to all existing health plans within six months.” Mike Madden of Salon also does a good job summarizing “Ten Things You Need to Know About the Health Care Bill.” For example, “children would be allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance until they turn 26.”
I’m sure there are many more great resources out there; I’m happy to host them in the comments. I don’t want to clutter a post on simple guides to the health care bill with too many leads. But for now, let me just congratulate two of the top journalists of the health care debate, Timothy Noah of Slate, and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, for their tireless attention to the real policy issues. And congratulations to Timothy S. Jost, one of the law professors who has most exhaustively described (and frequently defended) the bill just passed by Congress. I’ll be teaching his article “Health Care Reform Requires Law Reform” in my Health Care Finance & Regulation class tomorrow.
Image Credit: Sciascia.
March 21, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Posted in: Health Law
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Responses (2)
Patrick S. O'Donnell - March 21, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Frank,
I want to thank you, and folks like Robert Hockett, Steve Shiffrin and Michael Perry over at Mirror of Justice (and now ReligiousLeftLaw.com as well), for having your head and heart in the right place, for using your considerable intellectual and professional skills on behalf of goals that, in the end, serve individual flourishing and the common good. You yourself have accorded “tireless attention to the real policy issues” and we’re all better off as a result. Your students are blessed to have you as a teacher.
Brett Bellmore - March 22, 2010 at 4:20 am
Who cares what the reconciliation bill would theoretically do; Given the political and bribery cost of getting this bill passed, you think they’re going to make a serious attempt at reconciliation? It’s on to immigration ‘reform’, apparently on the theory that the voters can only kick you out once, so every hated vote after the first is free.
On the bright side, there’s enough anger floating around, we might finally get a constitutional convention.
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