For reference, a summary by BBC Online:

Cost: $940bn over 10 years; would reduce deficit by $143bn

Coverage: Expanded to 32m currently uninsured Americans

Medicare: Prescription drug coverage gap closed; affected over-65s receive rebate and discount on brand name drugs

Medicaid: Expanded to include families under 65 with gross income of up to 133% of federal poverty level and childless adults

Insurance reforms: Insurers can no longer deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions

Insurance exchanges: Uninsured and self-employed able to purchase insurance through state-based exchanges

Subsidies: Low-income individuals and families wanting to purchase own health insurance eligible for subsidies

Individual Mandate: Those not covered by Medicaid or Medicare must be insured or face fine

High-cost insurance: Employers offering workers pricier plans subject to tax on excess premium

The information and accompanying article here.

And here is a summary from the White House website:

Overview of Health Reform

Health reform puts American families and small business owners in control of their own health care.

* It makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today. This helps over 32 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today – and makes coverage more affordable for many more. Under the plan, 95% of Americans will be insured.
* It sets up a new competitive health insurance market giving tens of millions of Americans the same choices of insurance that members of Congress will have.
* It brings greater accountability to health care by laying out commonsense rules of the road to keep premiums down and prevent insurance industry abuses and denial of care.
* It will end discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions.
* It puts our budget and economy on a more stable path by reducing the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next ten years – and more than $1 trillion over the second decade – by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse.

The web page with some more details is here.

And here is a view highly critical of the plan from the Cato think tank in Washington:

For better or worse, President Obama's health care reform bill is now law. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act represents the most significant transformation of the American health care system since Medicare and Medicaid. It will fundamentally change nearly every aspect of health care, from insurance to the final delivery of care.

The length and complexity of the legislation, combined with a debate that often generated more heat than light, has led to massive confusion about the law's likely impact. But, it is now possible to analyze what is and is not in it, what it likely will and will not do. In particular, we now know that:

* While the new law will increase the number of Americans with insurance coverage, it falls significantly short of universal coverage. By 2019, roughly 21 million Americans will still be uninsured.
* The legislation will cost far more than advertised, more than $2.7 trillion over 10 years of full implementation, and will add $352 billion to the national debt over that period.
* Most American workers and businesses will see little or no change in their skyrocketing insurance costs, while millions of others, including younger and healthier workers and those who buy insurance on their own through the non-group market will actually see their premiums go up faster as a result of this legislation.
* The new law will increase taxes by more than $669 billion between now and 2019, and the burdens it places on business will significantly reduce economic growth and employment.
* While the law contains few direct provisions for rationing care, it nonetheless sets the stage for government rationing and interference with how doctors practice medicine.
* Millions of Americans who are happy with their current health insurance will not be able to keep it.

In short, the more we learn about what is in this new law, the more it looks like bad news for American taxpayers, businesses, health-care providers, and patients.

The weblink which leads on to a book on this subject is here.

And here is the advert for a book by Sally Pipes available on Amazon, also critical:

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill that will lead to the largest expansion of government in the history of the United States. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was more than 2,400 pages long and will reportedly cost a cool $1 trillion over ten years, give or take a few hundred billion.

But sticker shock is just the beginning. In The Truth about Obamacare, Sally Pipes shows how Obama’s health care “reform” will crash into our economy and culture with a tidal wave of regulations that, taken together, will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and see our doctors. How will all those changes affect you, your family, and your fellow Americans? Pipes goes over the bill with a fine-tooth comb, laying out the specifics of how and why Obamacare:

* will drive the country’s health care bill ever higher, according to the government’s own economists
* empowers bureaucrats to deny coverage of cutting-edge medicines in order to save the government money
* will exacerbate our nation’s shortage of doctors—and in fact, is already causing many to close up shop
* will make health care less affordable by forbidding insurers from offering inexpensive, bare-bones policies
* ratchets up Medicare payroll taxes—and adds brand new taxes on income—interest, capital gains, and dividends
* achieves every penny of its supposed “savings” through a series of legislative and accounting gimmicks
* creates a huge new enforcement bureaucracy—including 16,000 new IRS agents and an astounding 159 new boards and commissions—to hound taxpayers, businesses, hospitals, doctors, and insurers into compliance
* will still leave 23 million Americans uninsured by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Is it too late to stop Obamacare? By no means, argues Pipes—who shows how Americans can, and must, force its repeal. Then, she offers ten principles for real reform that would make health care accessible and affordable for all without destroying individual freedom, quality treatment, medical innovation, and the economy.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in NHS

Comments (0) TrackBack (0)