Obama Signs Health Care Reform

Posted by Brad Bosserman on April 1st, 2010 No Comments Printer-

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Sitting with the Vice President and his legislative allies last Tuesday, President Obama
signed in to law the most significant health care reform legislation of the past thirty
years. The national conversation about reform began during the run-up to the 2008
Presidential election. Over the last year plans have been written, debated, analyzed,
and re-written. The process has been marked by months of over-heated rhetoric and
contentious political wrangling. But the final reform bill, which cleared the Senate on
Christmas Eve with 60 votes, was sent to the President’s desk after House Democrats
were able to bring 219 Representatives onboard.

The goals of the sweeping legislation are to allow for near-universal insurance coverage,
to curb long-term medical costs, and to bring new regulation and transparency to the
private health insurance market. Many progressives argued that the best way to achieve
these goals was through single-payer options, where the government would pay doctors
directly, but political realities required concessions that rallied support behind more
moderate reforms. The provisions of the law will be phased in over the next six years,
with the most dramatic components, new insurance exchange markets, required
coverage, and robust low-income subsidies, to take affect in 2014.

Many opponents of the new law cited its 900 billion dollar price tag, spread over ten
years. Rep. John Boehner, the highest ranking Republican in the House, objected
before the final vote saying, “In this time of recession, they wanted us to focus on jobs,
not more spending, not more government, certainly not more taxes.” Proponents
responded by citing the analysis of the Congressional Budget Office, the non-partisan
accountants tasked with calculating the cost of all federal legislation. The CBO
concluded that the reform will reduce the deficit by $130 billion in the first ten years and
$1.2 trillion over the following ten years. This is achieved through a combination of
taxes, savings, and cost control mechanisms, such as increasing income taxes on
households making over $250,000 a year and taxing the most expensive health care
plans in an effort to combat medical inflation.

So what does all of this mean for college students? One of the provisions that takes
affect in six months will require all insurance companies to allow young adults to remain
covered on their parent’s health insurance until their 26th birthday. This will provide a
safety net for college graduates as they begin their careers and allow them to take jobs
without worrying about whether they provide insurance benefits. The law also saves $80
billion by ending a corporate subsidy to banks and instead provides student loans
directly to students and families. The majority of these savings will be used to increase
the availability of Pell Grants.
Many nursing students have been anxious about how the law will affect their academic
program and careers. Robi Thomas, Chair of the Grand Rapids Campus of the UDM
School of Nursing, is not worried. “I don’t feel that it will harm the nursing students or the
school whatsoever. As a nurse, I view reform as a good thing. This is a healthcare
system that hasn’t been significantly changed since the 1960s and this law is an
excellent start.” Key provisions will expand loan repayment and tuition reimbursement,
as well as giving nursing schools more discretion on how they spend federal money.
The law also tries to tackle long-term nursing shortages by increasing incentives for
experienced nurses to transition into teaching.

Although new polling indicates that a plurality of Americans support the reform law,
many people remain concerned. Michigan Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate
Mike Cox joined thirteen other states in filing a federal lawsuit claiming that the
individual mandate is unconstitutional. In a press release he argued that “Congress’
attempt to force Michigan families to buy health insurance-or else-raises serious
constitutional concerns.” Most legal experts believe that because the enforcement
mechanism uses the tax code, the case is facing an uphill battle. The law will be
implemented while the dispute is settled in Federal courts.

The reform debate also sparked a rift in the Catholic Church when Michigan Rep. Bart
Stupak led a block of pro-life Democrats to make their support conditional upon stronger
anti-abortion language. Although the legislation made no change to the existing ban on
federal abortion funding, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called on
lawmakers to vote against the bill, believing that some of the new subsidies would
indirectly allow for public financing of abortions. This spurred leaders of Major Catholic
Women’s Religious Orders to clarify the provision and announce their support in a letter
to Congress. “And despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide
taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience
protections and it will make historic new investments in support of pregnant women.”
The signatories of that letter represented 59,000 Catholic Sisters from across the United
States. Rep. Stupak voted in favor of the reform after President Obama agreed to issue
an executive order ensuring that the bill would not change current federal abortion laws.