Building off of two years of formal hearings and discussions, the health care reform debate has begun in earnest in Washington, D.C. Congress has set an aggressive timeline for debate with the goal of delivering a final bill to President Obama by October 15.
Five committees - Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Senate Finance, House Energy and Commerce, House Education and Labor and House Ways and Means - are involved in drafting health reform legislation. In the Senate, two bills, introduced by HELP Committee Chairman, Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and Finance Chairman, Max Baucus (D-MT) respectively, will be considered and then conferenced into one bill that will be put before the full Senate. In the House, the process will be more simple as the three chairs of the respective committees, Henry Waxman (D-CA), George Miller (D-CA) and Charles Rangel (D-NY), plan to introduce a single joint measure.
As outlined, all three bills would provide the self-employed, small employers and those without employer-provided insurance with access to an Exchange that would offer an array of private insurance products that are governed by a uniform national set of rating and underwriting rules. Insurance products offered through an Exchange would available to all eligible applicants regardless of their health history, be guaranteed to be renewed, and would not contain any pre-existing condition exclusions.
In addition, premiums would be set on the basis of a limited number of factors - type of policy, geographic location and age - that would not include health status or claims history. By establishing new rating rules, standardizing administrative functions and creating larger pools of insureds, proponents of the bills believe that premiums will be reduced
NAR has already submitted comments to the Senate HELP Committee on the Kennedy measure and will comment on each of the other proposals as they are released. While much remains to be determined and all proposals will be much amended, many of the elements of the NAR-supported Small Business Health Options Program Act (SHOP) have been, or are expected to be, incorporated into the drafts.
