If you like the health coverage you have, you can keep it. That’s been the rhetoric. But HR 3962, the bill Speaker Pelosi announced last week, doesn’t read that way. See Section 202(b)(1), “Grace Period” on page 91. An employer plan can remain as it is for a five-year grace period, but after that, the employer plan “must meet the same requirements as apply to a qualified health benefits plan.” And those requirements include all the rules about mandated benefits and how co-payments and deductibles are structured.
– Hanns Kuttner is a visiting fellow at Hudson Institute.