What the health care bill means to you - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

Rich Van Wyk/Eyewitness News

Indianapolis - A historic vote on health care ended months of contentious debate. But what does it mean for you, your family and the hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers without health insurance?

More than 800,000 Hoosiers are among the 32 million uninsured Americans the Health Care Reform bill promises to help. Millions more who already have health insurance will benefit too.

"It's not perfect. It's not the bill I would design if I was writing it from the ground up, but is does much more good than harm," said Dr. Aaron Carroll.

Carroll is director of IU's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism and Research. He says middle class families will benefit most from the changes.

"It is the people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid and can't afford insurance, who don't get it through their job, that is the people the bill is trying to help first," he said.

New rules will make more families eligible for Medicaid. Those who don't qualify get subsidies to purchase insurance. There is also coverage for workers who retire early and lower prescription costs for seniors.

Insurance companies will be forbidden to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, or set lifetime benefit limits. Coverage for preventative services such as mammograms would be required.

But the greater number of people insured, having greater access to health care, will have a great cost. It would be enormously expensive, insists Gov. Mitch Daniels, who believes the new provisions "will lead certainly to higher health care costs and a much weaker economy going forward."

Daniels says with in a few years, the expansion of Medicaid coverage will cost Indiana hundreds of million dollars a year.

"That is an additional tax to be paid through the state sales and income tax," he said.

Small business will pay more too. The bill requires those with 50 or more employees to provide health insurance or face significant fines.

There are also new taxes on indoor tanning services, high end insurance plans, and the unearned income of upper income families.

Those changes and many more will be phased in, starting 90 days after the bill is enacted and concluding in 2019.

Gov. Daniels says the legislation will eliminate The Healthy Indiana Plan. HIP provides health insurance coverage for 45,000 moderate income families.

Daniels ordered the program to stop accepting new applications at least until all the details of the federal legislation are worked out.

Further reading:

MSNBC - Health care fact vs fiction interactive

New York Times interactive explainer

CNN - How the bill could affect you

Obama's reaction to the passage of the bill

Read the bill