Later On

From an email from the Center for American Progress:

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) unveiled the re-tooled Affordable Health Care for America Act (HR 3962). The bill will cost approximately $900 billion over 10 years, extending health coverage to 36 million Americans (6-7 million more than the Senate Finance Committee’s version). As the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky points out, it also "includes a national public option that reimburses physicians at negotiated rates and requires individuals to acquire coverage and large employers to provide it." A less-noticed — but still significant — part of the bill would ensure that insurers in the individual market would no longer treat domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. This vital reform would prevent insurers from rejecting women who have survived domestic abuse for health insurance coverage — a practice currently allowed in eight states. This provision is part of the bill’s larger ban on pre-existing conditions, which stipulates that insurers cannot discriminate based on "health status, medical condition, claims experience, receipt of health care, medical history, genetic information, evidence of insurability, disability, or source of injury (including conditions arising out of acts of domestic violence) or any similar factors." In 2006, Senate Democrats on the Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee tried to end domestic violence as a pre-existing condition, but lost in a 10-10 vote. All the "nay" votes were Republicans. Women currently pay up to 50 percent more for health insurance than a man would shell out for the same coverage, and most individual health insurance markets don’t cover maternity care.