Health Care Reform Bills Crib Sheet

TPM's Brian Beutler has done what no MSMer dare: explain simply and concisely what the proposed health care reform bills will actually do. It's short, simple, invaluable - print this out, carry it around with you.

Right now, it's impossible to compare what the Senate is trying to do with what the House is trying to do because Reid hasn't unveiled his bill yet. But though there will surely be some major differences, both proposals will contain some of the same underlying architecture.

The basic theme of health care reform is that insurance would be mandatory, subsidized and regulated. As is the case today, for the first many years after enactment, most people in the country would be insured by their employers--in fact, large and medium-sized businesses would be required to provide insurance for their employees. Uninsured people would either be roped into existing entitlement programs like Medicaid, or required to buy regulated insurance--typically through an "exchange," which, comprised of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of customers, would theoretically have the bargaining power needed to keep premiums down.

For being handed a captive market, insurers would be faced with a new playing field: they'd be required to sell insurance to all comers, without using prior health conditions or gender as the basis for price discrimination. Though premiums would still vary based on things like age and geography, no two people of the same age in the same area would face the same serious price differentials they often see today. And both the House and the Senate would end the practice of "rescission"--canceling peoples' policies or denying payment once they get sick.

Of course, poor and middle class people would still be on the hook for thousands of dollars a year worth of premiums, so the government would offer tax credits to people below a certain income to help them buy insurance--the lower your income, the greater your subsidy.

Though we can't say for certain how the House and Senate plans will be at odds with one another, some of the key differences are likely to be a). the generosity of the subsidies, b). the way the subsidies and entitlement expansions are paid for, c). the stringency of the mandates, and d). the degree to which private insurers are regulated.

Read the whole thing.