Senate May Approve 117 Billion for Health Care
February 3, 2009
According to the Christian Science Monitor 117 billion of the 819 Billion economic stimulus plan is being spent on some form of healthcare.
Here’s the breakdown:
- 87 Billion is for state medicaid which helps the poor with healthcare
- 11 Billion is for extension of the medicaid program to the newly uninsured – not sure what that means
- 29 Billion is to help the unemployed pay for private health insurance
- 20 Billion to implement new technologies to help reduce the cost of healthcare.
The help for medicaid and private health insurance are considered temporary, but some hope that this helps take a step towards nationalized health care.
Ranked 2nd to my surprise was helping the newly unemployed obtain health insurance behind helping businesses keep or create new jobs.
The biggest help that I saw in the article was that if the stimulus plan was approved was for COBRA then instead of paying 102% you would receive a 65% subsidy to help you with your health insurance coverage. Currently most employers pay 75% – 85% of your healthcare, so this means that your health insurance would only increase 10-20% which would help out a lot of people since only 9% actually do COBRA because of the high cost.
Another amazing thing would be if you are age 55 or older they could extend your COBRA health insurance coverage for 10 years which would make you then eligible for medicare – that’s pretty cool!
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