According to a report released yesterday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, President Obama's proposal for health insurance reform will provide insurance for 32,000,000 Americans -- more than the populations of Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia combined -- thus guaranteeing that 95 percent of working Americans will be covered.President Obama's health insurance reform plan will:
* Make health insurance affordable for middle-class households and small businesses -- including the largest middle-class tax cuts for health care in history -- reducing premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
* Strengthen consumer protections and reins in insurance-company abuses.
* Give millions of Americans the same types of private insurance choices that members of Congress will have -- through a new, competitive health insurance market that keeps costs down.
* Hold insurance companies accountable to keep premiums down and prevent denials of care and coverage, including for pre-existing conditions.
* Improve Medicare benefits -- with lower prescription drug costs for those in the "donut hole," better chronic care, free preventive care, and nearly a decade more of solvency for Medicare.
* Trim the federal deficit by $130 billion over next 10 years, and $1.2 trillion dollars over the following decade -- reining in waste, fraud and abuse; overpayments to insurance companies; and by paying for quality over quantity of care.
As President Obama says, "We must act now" and put American families and small businesses -- not health insurance companies -- in control of their own health care.
For more information, go to:
* Americans for Stable Quality Care: http://www.stablequalitycare.org/
* CNN/Health Care in America: http://bit.ly/HealthCareInAmerica
* HealthReform.gov: http://www.healthreform.gov/
* Kaiser Family Foundation: http://healthreform.kff.org/
By all accounts, the final-stretch vote on health insurance reform will happen as soon as this Sunday [March 21]. To encourage your U.S. senators and representatives in Congress to pass this historic health reform legislation, please visit the following website for contact info: http://bit.ly/ElectedOfficials
SOURCES: Congressional Budget Office, Politico, U.S. Census Bureau, USA.gov, The White House
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