House Health Care Bill (Full Text)

House Democrats have released their newest version of the health care reform bill, weighing in at a whopping 1,018 pages, and HuffPost's Eyes and Ears is calling on you to help read through the legislation.

We've published the first 400 pages of the text, which includes many of the largest reforms, on individual pages so that readers can discuss each item of the bill using a new application called Insight. Check out details about the project here.

Due to the difficulty formatting the bill for, we're publishing the full document through Docstoc. You can discuss the latter half of the bill in the comment section below and email me directly with any red flags you find or inside information about the legislation. You can also download the full pdf version of the bill here.

House Health Care Bill (July 15) -

Comments

[seerickson]

05:06 PM on 07/19/2009

My son in law told me that there are reports going around that page 16 of the document indicates that unless you are grandfathered in this is a provision to make individual private insurance illeagal, and if you cancel it then you can only get insurance through the health plan. This of course is ridiculous in the way i read those provisions. Has anyone else heard about this smear going around?

[Gruffie1]

11:02 PM on 07/21/2009

So, which bill are you reading? Page 16 sounds pretty clear to me. No new policies can be written after January 1 of the year this take-over-the-entire-health-care-industry bill passes. You can keep your existing policy... but don't do anything to lose it or you're stuck with the government's plan. So an enterprising person leaves their corporate job--and their group health plan--to start a new company, and they find that they can no longer get personal health insurance on their own. That's certainly a great way to stimulate new business, isn't it? What a joke! This is nothing more than pure socialism: take over the health care system and keep everyone from rocking the boat at the same time.

[Joel Redman]

01:40 PM on 07/22/2009

Actually the way I'm reading this is that employers won't be able to switch immediately to a public option, nor will insurance companies be permitted to drop you. It says nothing about whether new policies can be created after January 1st.

[Kris Semelka]

09:01 PM on 07/23/2009

It only defines a "Grandfathered Health Insurance Coverage" as something that hasn't been enacted before January 1st of the year that the bill goes through and starts working. There's nothing about eliminating the option of switching to a private provider after this bill goes through. Your Anti-Socialist view has blinded you.

[David Pru]

02:16 PM on 08/14/2009

Yes, there are a ton of these myths out there (although the way these silly legal documents are written it's easy to become confused). As I read it, the provision merely requires that any private health care offering (i.e. an employer provided option) prior to the date of passage can remain a stand alone package and is not required to be transferable should an employee switch jobs (this is considered the "grandfather" policy and certain conditions are required to maintain that status such as not raising premiums for a high risk individual unless all premiums are increased, etc.); however, any private employer option created or issued after the date of bill passage (not grandfathered in) must be capable of following an individual to a new job with the same type of premium as originally issued (this is referred to as the "exchange participating health benefits plan" on page 19). The purpose is to allow the individual to keep the same coverage and same premium plan.