Here is the Detailed Summary of the Affordable Health Care for America Act

http://www.politico.com/static/PPM41_hcr_complete_summary.html

While the link is to Politico, it is the actual summary "Prepared by the Committee on Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce and Education & Labor" so it is the real deal. It's 11 pages. Now maybe we can really zero in on the good and bad of this bill.


Thanks to sinking feeling for finding this and posting it in a reply in this thread in GD - it's the first time I've seen it anywhere.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6888792&mesg_id=6889416

Eligibility. People are eligible to enter the Exchange and purchase health insurance on their own as long as they are not enrolled in employer sponsored insurance, Medicare or Medicaid. The Exchange is also open to businesses, starting with small firms and growing over time. Firms with twenty-five or fewer employees are permitted to buy in the Exchange in 2013, firms with fifty or fewer employees in 2014, and firms with at least one hundred employees in 2015 with discretion to the Commissioner to open the Exchange to larger businesses in that year and the future.

But what if I don't want my employer's insurance? I sit on the benefits committee of my employer and just yesterday we met with a representative to discuss our plan for 2010. Costs are either staying the same or going up. I reminded the representative that our employer has established a wage-freeze for 2010. All I got was a shrug of the shoulders and a "lot of companies have wage-freezes next year." But he agreed with a wage-freeze and yet another year of "rising health costs" (which I now recognize as huge CEO salaries and making sure the investors get their's), we will be taking home less than 2009.

So what if I peruse the Exchange plan and find it would save me and my family money? I can't switch? What kind of fucking "reform" is that?

in the Senate that got nowhere as far as I know.

So call, write, bombard your Senators and Congress people! We have a little bit of time to show that far from rejecting "government-run"(gasp!) healthcare, Americans are embracing it and want to have the option of having it as a choice.

Door #2) Don't.

Door #1 ends medical bankruptcies, creates a publicly-available insurance plan which anyone needing insurance can purchase. It sets up a national exchange which mandates adequate service levels and establishes standardized offerings. It sets up a system of subsidies which enable people of moderate means to purchase coverage that can't be denied because of preexisting conditions and can't be taken away except for nonpayment. If you have insurance you like, you can keep it, and the bill also guarantees that your employer will provide adequate coverage and pick up most of the cost. Most likely, the subsidies will be paid for by a tax on the rich.

The downside? It doesn't take effect immediately and (absent Wyden's amendment) people who already have insurance can't switch unless they change jobs.

Door #2 None of the upside and all of the downside. Not only are the people who have insurance stuck with that plan, they are also stuck with that employer.