Reconciliation Bill Posted: Summary and Full Text Inside

H.R. 4872, the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010, has been posted.  We’ll be combing through the full text of the bill to add to our health care reform page, but wanted to make the .pdf easy to find for our readers.  Since it is an amendment to the Senate bill everything will be relative to the legislation that passed the Senate.  The high-points located so-far (including some notes for myself during the detailed review):

• Student loan reform – is in this bill (Big Government of health care not enough!?!?!?!)
  
  • Termination of Federal Family Education Loan Appropriations
  • Termination of interest rate limits
  • Termination of Federal subsidies that keep interest payments low
  • Termination of FFEL PLUS loans
  • Termination of Federal Consolidation loans
  • Termination of unsubsidized Stafford loans for middle-class
• More tax credits given to pay for individual premiums (how are they paying for this?)
• Changes the penalty amount individuals must pay if they choose to stay uninsured (or under-insured)
• Changes employer responsibility to make the first 30 uncovered employees “free”
• Gives $1 Billion to Health and Human Services to administer the reform
• $250 rebate and 75% discounts on drugs in 2020 to close the donut hole (where do these discounts come from?)
• Freezes Medicare Advantage payments at current levels (will cause more providers to walk away from accepting this plan – but that’s intended)
• “Corn Husker Kick-back” removed: would have allowed for Nebraska to get 100% matching funds from govt.
• Gives “Corn Husker Kick-Back” to all states
• Matches Medicaid payments to physicians to those made by Medicare
• Increases Federal funding to Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and N. Marianas by $2 Billion and raises the caps on Medicaid spending for those territories
• Additional reviews of medicare payments to prevent fraud and waste
• Increases fraud and waste fund by $250Million over the next 10 years
• 90-day review period for medical equipment fraud suspicion
• 80% reduction in revenue collected by high-cost plan excise tax (where are they making up for this?).  Tax will be delayed until 2018 and adjusted for inflation
• Investment income will now be included in the taxable base calculation for those that make over $200,000
• Delays fees on name-brand drugs used by individuals in government health plans until 2011.  (more money to make up with something else)
• Tax on medical devices to 2014 (can’t wait to see what makes up for this money)
• Prohibition of lifetime limits, excessive waiting periods, and requires dependent child coverage until age 26
• Increases funding of “Community Health Centers”

What’s Not in the bill that we’ve seen so far?:

• language to remove public funding of abortion
• language to remove the exemption of labor unions from the cadillac insurance plan tax (gifts to the friends of Obama)
• Gatorade and Louisiana purchase still in (bought votes)