Healthcare Reform Passes in the House
BY LAUREN UZDIENSKI, MARCH 22, 2010
The House passed a healthcare reform package last night by a small margin - 219-212 - and now the final vote is in the Senate's hands. The House first passed the Senate's version of the bill from last year, alleviating any scrutiny over "deeming" the bill, and then proceeded to pass a reconciliation bill consisting of changes to the Senate's version. Now that package of changes will face a Senate vote, where it will require only a simple majority to pass.
Among the new regulations set forth in the package are changes to the payer infrastructure; the bill will create exchanges where individuals will be able to shop for insurance coverage and reform insurer practices such as limiting coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The legislation does include a mandate requiring individuals to have insurance, with fines for not complying to reach 2.5% of income by 2016. Congress and the White House have estimated that these and other measures will insure an additional 32 million people in the coming years.
The bill will cost $940 billion, and several sectors of the healthcare industry will be helping to fund the overhaul. There was an 11th-hour revision to the bill on Saturday that decreased an excise tax on the medical device industry from 2.9% to 2.3%, though the House also eliminated an exemption for consumer devices (e.g., contact lenses) that had been in place in the Senate version. The tax will be levied beginning in 2013 and is expected to raise $20 billion over a decade. This compares to $70 billion in taxes on the insurance industry and $84.8 billion on pharma, which had originally agreed to about $5 billion less. The medical device industry lobbied to prevent a similar increase for devices, pushing successfully to cap the total burden at $20 billion.
