OSPIRG BLOG

Health security, better choices and lower costs.

That's what consumers and small businesses will be able to look forward to if the U.S. House of Representatives' health care bill unveiled today becomes law.

Key highlights:

• Bans on the most egregious insurance industry practices: pre-existing condition denials, lifetime or yearly caps on benefits, price discrimination based on health history, and rescission of coverage based on small enrollment form errors once you get sick.

• An Institute of Medicine study to recommend how best to encourage better care at lower cost, and requiring those recommendations be automatically implemented unless specifically blocked.

• A strong, national Health Insurance Exchange which allows small businesses and individuals without affordable employer-based coverage to pool their bargaining power and negotiate better deals with insurers.

• A public health insurance plan option, competing on a level playing field with private coverage plans in the exchange. This public option would generate much needed choice and competition, leading to lower costs for consumers, small businesses, and the nation.

• Research into which treatments work best, so that consumers and their providers can be armed with the latest science when making decisions about care.

• New incentives for primary and preventive care, keeping Americans healthy and away from expensive unneeded emergency room visits.

• Health information technology and cutting red tape, allowing providers to spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients.

• An end to expensive drug and insurance industry subsidies, by allowing the government to purchase low-income seniors' prescription drugs at lower Medicaid prices and cutting subsidies to private insurers currently paid by Medicare.