WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR OF ENACTMENT

*Insurance companies will be barred from dropping people from coverage when they get sick. Lifetime coverage limits will be eliminated and annual limits are to be restricted.

*Insurers will be barred from excluding children for coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

*Young adults will be able to stay on their parents' health plans until the age of 26. Many health plans currently drop dependents from coverage when they turn 19 or finish college.

*Uninsured adults with a pre-existing conditions will be able to obtain health coverage through a new program that will expire once new insurance exchanges begin operating in 2014.

*A temporary reinsurance program is created to help companies maintain health coverage for early retirees between the ages of 55 and 64. This also expires in 2014.

*Medicare drug beneficiaries who fall into the "doughnut hole" coverage gap will get a $250 rebate. The bill eventually closes that gap which currently begins after $2,700 is spent on drugs. Coverage starts again after $6,154 is spent.

*A tax credit becomes available for some small businesses to help provide coverage for workers.

*A 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services that use ultraviolet lamps goes into effect on July 1.

WHAT HAPPENS IN 2011

*Medicare provides 10 percent bonus payments to primary care physicians and general surgeons.

*Medicare beneficiaries will be able to get a free annual wellness visit and personalized prevention plan service. New health plans will be required to cover preventive services with little or no cost to patients.

*A new program under the Medicaid plan for the poor goes into effect in October that allows states to offer home and community based care for the disabled that might otherwise require institutional care.

*Payments to insurers offering Medicare Advantage services are frozen at 2010 levels. These payments are to be gradually reduced to bring them more in line with traditional Medicare.

*Employers are required to disclose the value of health benefits on employees' W-2 tax forms.

*An annual fee is imposed on pharmaceutical companies according to market share. The fee does not apply to companies with sales of $5 million or less.

WHAT HAPPENS IN 2012

*Physician payment reforms are implemented in Medicare to enhance primary care services and encourage doctors to form "accountable care organizations" to improve quality and efficiency of care.

*An incentive program is established in Medicare for acute care hospitals to improve quality outcomes.

*The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the government programs, begin tracking hospital readmission rates and puts in place financial incentives to reduce preventable readmissions.

WHAT HAPPENS IN 2013

*A national pilot program is established for Medicare on payment bundling to encourage doctors, hospitals and other care providers to better coordinate patient care.

*The threshold for claiming medical expenses on itemized tax returns is raised to 10 percent from 7.5 percent of income. The threshold remains at 7.5 percent for the elderly through 2016.

*The Medicare payroll tax is raised to 2.35 percent from 1.45 percent for individuals earning more than $200,000 and married couples with incomes over $250,000. The tax is imposed on some investment income for that income group.

*A 2.9 percent excise tax in imposed on the sale of medical devices. Anything generally purchased at the retail level by the public is excluded from the tax.

WHAT HAPPENS IN 2014

*State health insurance exchanges for small businesses and individuals open.

*Most people will be required to obtain health insurance coverage or pay a fine if they don't. Healthcare tax credits become available to help people with incomes up to 400 percent of poverty purchase coverage on the exchange.

*Health plans no longer can exclude people from coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

*Employers with 50 or more workers who do not offer coverage face a fine of $2,000 for each employee if any worker receives subsidized insurance on the exchange. The first 30 employees aren't counted for the fine.

*Health insurance companies begin paying a fee based on their market share.

WHAT HAPPENS IN 2015

*Medicare creates a physician payment program aimed at rewarding quality of care rather than volume of services.

WHAT HAPPENS IN 2018

*An excise tax on high cost employer-provided plans is imposed. The first $27,500 of a family plan and $10,200 for individual coverage is exempt from the tax. Higher levels are set for plans covering retirees and people in high risk professions.

You are correct. I haven't read it. I fear it will become bloated, corrupt and expensive. But I don't know that. I can be hopeful, but that is all. My point is that so many people claim what this bill IS or ISN'T, but they don't know. They haven't read and chances are if they did they didn't understand it.

In my lifetime I cannot recall any government program that did not cost many times more than predicted. I find it difficult to believe this program will not cost the taxpayers instead of saving taxpayers money.

I would agree. It seems like any time the government gets involved in something you can expect it to cost more than assumed.

Hell, look at the RomneyCare in Massachusetts. It has cost twice as much as they thought it would and it was founded by a so called conservative.

Yes it has cost more...but it is my understanding that the majority of people are satisfied with the program and it is also my understanding they voted in the Republican to help kill the House and Senate bill as they consider their program to be a better one than the House/Senate bill.

That is what I have read too. It seems the people of Mass are very happy with what they have and they didn't want it replaced with the federal version. I can't say as I blame them.

Are you up late or up very early. I am up late but that is the norm for me.

Up late. I'm heading to bed soon, but I fell on Thursday and broke a couple of ribs. So I took some nice pain killers earlier today and slept for a while and now I can't sleep.

I have had four broken ribs so I am familiar with the pain...but then again I have lived with mind numbing pain 24/7 since '91 so I am familiar with pain in general. What pain pills were prescribed for you?

They gave me about half a dozen Percocet at the hospital and then a prescription for Vicodin. Never had Percocet before, they have a pretty good kick to them. :)

On a side not, Firefox spell check doesn't recognize the words Percocet and Vicodin. They think I am trying to spell Percolate and Victorian. . . That fact might be a little funnier half stoned :)

I take Vicodin and sometimes I use Morphine patches...but I am required to keep the pain level up to be aware of my movements or I could become paralyzed. It purely sucks the big one to be in pain 24/7 with no end to it until death. In addition I can only sit for a limited time...stand for a limited time...walk for a limited time...and sleep for a couple of hours at a time.

That really sucks man. Luckily for me pain like this has never been a big part of my life. I have had some injuries or odd things (like I got an abscessed tooth once that hurt like hell - oddly enough though that tooth is how I met my girlfriend because she works at the dentist office I went too and I broke the ribs when I fell carrying her groceries in. I joked with her that she does nothing be cause me pain :) ) but never really long term.

I knew a guy several years ago that had worked on an crab boat in Alaska. He was at sea working and bent over on the main deck to pick something up. A guy on the deck above didn't look below and he dropped a 40 lbs box of frozen fish bait over the rail. It fell 10 feel and landed on his lower back as he was bent over. Fucked him up bad. When I knew him it had been about 6 years after it had happened and he couldn't sit for more than about 30-45 minutes without having to get up and walk around then he couldn't stand and walk around for more than about 30-45 minutes without having to sit. He said it changed his life because he can't even do something like go to the movies because he can't sit in the seat for the two hours the movie is on. If he goes he has to sit on the end of the aisle so he can get up and stand by the wall periodically.

Secularism is the concept that government or other entities should exist separately from religion and/or religious beliefs.

To me secularism just means the absence of religion. As far as separation of church and state is concerned, I'm with the constitution on that. It doesn't make me secularist. I'm proud that we have a Judeo-Christian state.

That is a redefinition of secularism and if you believe in separation of church and state you are indeed secularist. Secularism is far from Atheism. I am an Atheist.

Personally, I don't see how anyone could blindly follow any religion and contrary to popular belief, we are not a Judeo-Christian nation in the sense that the majority of the founding fathers were Deists and not Christians... that narrative is propaganda floated by the right wing evangelical movement.

Some of the founding fathers subscribed to the philosophy of John Locke which was a different Deist school of thought than that of Thomas Jefferson, for instance... but Christianity didn't even exist in it's current form at that time.

While the Bible contains alot of wisdom, I have a hard time understanding how anyone could subscribe to the "magic" of the stories within... and it has evolved into something completely different than it was in it's inception. We are talking about a religion derived from writings from the Bronze age and even before that. The concept of Science hadn't even been considered (even though math and engineering existed). Right now, you know enough about basic science and engineering to have been considered a wizard at the time the original Bible was written and for centuries after.

I see religion as a way for the aristocracy to control the masses... and there is centuries of proof to back me up. Religion has grown to be a crutch used by weak minded individuals to place the blame of their failures on something other than themselves. It is a means to fleece the population and is one of the biggest scams on the planet... especially in our American society where it enriches the con-men who are protected by the state to the extent that they don't even have to pay taxes on their income. Some even hold more power than the CEO of a multi-national corporation or a sitting Senator. I am not saying that religion is wholly evil... it does alot of good in the world... but it's definitely not in balance... because in our world history, it has done much more evil than good.

Agreed. People need answers to life's unanswerable questions, otherwise they can't cope. Religions step in to fill the void with fairy tales and brainwashing. Sad but true.

Sorry, I was referring to secular humanism. I'm religious who believes in separation of church and state, as do most religious people Ik now.

The majority were WASPS. I can find as many links as you and call it "left wing secularist propaganda." It doesn't make it true.
http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/heritage/heritage19.html
http://www.faithofourfathers.net/
http://www.earlyamericanhistory.net/...ng_fathers.htm

I suspect you'll fall into your usual pattern of calling everything I say "right wing propaganda", and your posts are "fact."

Point being?

Seeing as how you aren't supposed to take most of the bible literally, and that science and the bible don't contradict one another, I fail to see your point. For everyone who ridicules people for believing in a higher being, there's just as much ridicule for believing in mankind.

REally? I see secular humanism as a bunch of bullshit excuses to do whatever one likes. Just add the words "relativism" in it, and you're golden. Following man's laws makes things more or less relative, and if there's no right or wrong, everything is acceptable. Only insecure human beings need to claim that religion is for people looking to it as a crutch. That would be highly hypocritical considering those who follow moral relativism.

Is it possible for a filibuster to happen with this bill? Maybe.