Congress approved a healthcare reform "fix" bill on Thursday, completing the healthcare overhaul victory for Democrats.
The fix bill adds changes that House Democrats had wanted in the healthcare reform law that was passed by the House on March 21.
President Barack Obama signed the overhaul package, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, into law on Tuesday, and will shortly sign the companion Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.
Together, the new laws call for changes to American healthcare to be implemented over the next four years.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the laws will provide healthcare coverage to 32 million uninsured and "accountability" to insurance companies.
According to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the laws will:
- Establish a temporary national high-risk pool to provide health coverage to individuals with pre-existing medical conditions, effective 90 days following enactment until Jan. 1, 2014;
- Provide dependent coverage for adult children up to age 26 for all individual and group policies;
- Prohibit individual and group health plans from placing lifetime limits on the dollar value of coverage, and prior to 2014, allow plans to impose only annual limits on coverage as determined by the Health and Human Services Secretary;
- Prohibit insurers from rescinding coverage except in cases of fraud and prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children;
- Require qualified health plans to provide at a minimum coverage without cost-sharing for immunizations, preventive care for infants, children and adolescents and additional preventive care and screenings for women recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force;
- Provide tax credits to small employers with no more than 25 employees and average annual wages of less than $50,000 that provide health insurance for employees;
- Create a temporary reinsurance program for employers providing health insurance coverage to retirees over age 55 who are not eligible for Medicare, effective 90 days following enactment until Jan.1, 2014;
- Require health plans to report the proportion of premium dollars spent on clinical services, quality and other costs and provide rebates to consumers for the amount of the premium spent on clinical services and quality that is less than 85 percent for plans in the large group market and 80 percent for plans in the individual and small group markets;
- Establish a process for reviewing increases in health plan premiums and require plans to justify increases;
- Require states to report on trends in premium increases and recommend whether certain plans should be excluded from the exchange based on unjustified premium increases.