A New Search for Consensus on Health Care Bill

From The New York Times:

Lawmakers, Congressional aides and health policy experts said the [pared-back approach] package might plausibly include these elements:

¶Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions.

¶Insurers would have to offer policyholders an opportunity to continue coverage for children through age 25 or 26.

¶The federal government would offer financial incentives to states to expand Medicaid to cover childless adults and parents.

¶The federal government would offer grants to states to establish regulated markets known as insurance exchanges, where consumers and small businesses could buy coverage.

¶The federal government would offer tax credits to small businesses to help them defray the cost of providing health benefits to workers.

¶If a health plan provided care through a network of doctors and hospitals, it could not charge patients more for going outside the network in an emergency. Co-payments for emergency care would have to be the same, regardless of whether a hospital was in the insurer’s network of preferred providers.

The package could also include changes in Medicare, to reduce the growth in payments to doctors and hospitals while rewarding providers of high-quality, lower-cost care. To help older Americans, it could narrow a gap in Medicare coverage of prescription drugs, sometimes known as a doughnut hole.