Health insurance reform imminent?

After so many seemingly interminable months of back-and-forth, is health insurance reform finally imminent?  It is looking that way, thankfully.  The bill is not as strong as most of us would like, but it still represents a drastic improvement on the status quo for a huge number of people.  Paul Krugman summed it up in the New York Times a few days ago:

[L]et’s all take a deep breath, and consider just how much good this bill would do, if passed — and how much better it would be than anything that seemed possible just a few years ago. With all its flaws, the Senate health bill would be the biggest expansion of the social safety net since Medicare, greatly improving the lives of millions. Getting this bill would be much, much better than watching health care reform fail.At its core, the bill would do two things. First, it would prohibit discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of medical condition or history: Americans could no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or have their insurance canceled when they get sick. Second, the bill would provide substantial financial aid to those who don’t get insurance through their employers, as well as tax breaks for small employers that do provide insurance.All of this would be paid for in large part with the first serious effort ever to rein in rising health care costs.

The result would be a huge increase in the availability and affordability of health insurance, with more than 30 million Americans gaining coverage, and premiums for lower-income and lower-middle-income Americans falling dramatically. That’s an immense change from where we were just a few years ago: remember, not long ago the Bush administration and its allies in Congress successfully blocked even a modest expansion of health care for children.

As the title of his piece says, "Pass the bill!".

Comments

[insurance]

Not to sure where the USA insurance companies stand on disputing a genuine claim on the grounds of not disclosing information whether it is relevent or not like the UK insurance companies do and the sad thing is for many policy holders is that they are entitled to do so in the law that stands at the moment. Some of the UK laws go back to 1906 and have never been amended to stay up todate with the current times on this massive industry.

[ATB]

With all its flaws this is still a good start. Democracy always requires compromise because we are all different. No country that has universal health insurance did it in one fell swoop. All built to it over time.