National Health Insurance Exchange: The Obama plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency.
Employer Contribution: Employers that do not offer or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan. Small employers that meet certain revenue thresholds will be exempt.
Mandatory Coverage of Children: Obama will require that all 9 million uninsured children, including almost 200,000 in Virginia, have health care coverage. Obama will expand the number of options for young adults to get coverage, including allowing young people up to age 25 to continue coverage through their parents’ plans.
Expansion of Medicaid and SCHIP: Obama will expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function. In Virginia, these programs currently cover more than 1 million children and adults combined.
Reduce Costs and Save a Typical American Family up to $2,500 Each Year: Obama will reduce health care costs by adopting state-of-the art health information technology systems, improving access to preventive care and chronic disease management programs, and requiring hospitals to collect and report health care cost and quality data. He will also reform our market structure to increase competition in the insurance and drug markets, and lower drug costs by allowing importation of safe medicines from other developed countries and increasing use of generics in public programs.
Protect and Strengthen Medicare: Obama is committed to the long-term strength of Medicare, a program that provides health care to 42 million American seniors. He will reduce waste in the Medicare system, including eliminating subsidies to the private insurance Medicare Advantage program, and tackle fundamental health care reform to improve the quality and efficiency of our healthcare system.
Reduce Prescription Drug Costs: Obama will help seniors get the medicine they need by closing the “doughnut hole” in the Medicare prescription drug program. Obama will prevent drug companies from blocking cheap generic medicines from the market, supports allowing the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower drug prices in the Medicare program and will allow the safe re-importation of prescription drugs from developed countries.
Small Business: Obama’s plan will reduce the burden on the more than half a million Virginia small businesses by providing a refundable Small Business Health Tax Credit of up to 50 percent on premiums paid by small businesses on behalf of their employees.
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