Reader questions: No, the health-care bill does not keep you from paying money in exchange for services

 

Commenter Fast Eddie is concerned:

Do you have enough courage to take on the most controversial part of the whole Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda?

If they managed to get the Senate bill passed in the House, HOW WOULD THAT EFFECT A MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES ABILITY TO PRIVATELY CONTRACT WITH THEIR PERSONAL DOCTOR in the event that their healthcare insurance won't cover something?

It wouldn't. There is nothing in either bill that bars you from giving a doctor money in exchange for a service. But my experience with these fears is that they usually come from a very twisted and wrong reading of something that actually exists in the bill. So if this is based on a real provision, let me know where it is and we can go through it in more detail.


Related

  • I promised to return to this subject after I'd dug into the details a bit more, so here we are. The rumor going around that the health-care bills won't let you pay your doctor for services that your insurer won't provide is simply false. It relies on a misunderstanding of what private contracting means in Medicare, and then a misunderstanding of how it's been applied -- or not applied -- to the health-care bill.

  • Reader DS writes:

  • One thing this bill will not do if passed is end the controversy over US healthcare. The argument over paying for it would become more intense: while the bill conforms to Obama's demand that it be 'deficit-neutral', for the most part it only pretends to deal with the costs, writes Clive Crook

  • In an epic struggle settled at dawn, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed health care legislation Thursday, a triumph for President Barack Obama that clears the way for compromise talks with the House on a bill to reduce the ranks of the uninsured and rein in the insurance industry.

  • In an epic struggle settled at dawn, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed health care legislation Thursday, a triumph for President Barack Obama that clears the way for compromise talks with the House on a bill to reduce the ranks of the uninsured and rein in the insurance industry.

  • Nope. The bill on the House Budget Committee's web site that's being called the reconciliation bill is not the reconciliation bill, or at least not what people mean when they talk about the reconciliation bill. It's the bill that will become the reconciliation bill. You see this occasionally in the House and Senate, where the oddities of the rules occasionally make it useful to put a new bill in the hollowed-out shell of an old bill.

  • Tom Lydon (ETF Trends) submits: Are you interested in the healthcare industry and new to the investment possibilities found in healthcare related exchange traded funds? Let’s take a look at the basics in investing in this segment of the marketplace.

  • The House passed landmark health care legislation Saturday night to expand coverage to tens of millions who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry. The Senate takes up the bill next.

  • Reuters - The Senate's next jobs bill would extend unemployment insurance for a full year, help cash-strapped states pay for rising healthcare costs, and renew a series of expired tax breaks, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Wednesday.

  • A lot of the onus for health care's sudden derailing has been placed on the House, which is bafflingly opposed to passing the Senate bill. But the Senate isn't making life any easier, refusing to do the one thing that would make the House comfortable with the Senate bill. Politico reports:

 
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