Highlights from the AP story:
The sweeping measure would impose penalties on employers who fail to provide health insurance for their workers and on individuals who refuse to buy it.
The bill also would require insurance companies to offer coverage, without exceptions or higher premiums in cases of pre-existing medical conditions. It also would allow the government to sell insurance in competition with private firms.
Key elements of the legislation include federal subsidies for poorer individuals and families to help them afford coverage.
Financing would come from a federal surtax on the upper income — up to 5.4% on the income of taxpayers making more than $1 million a year — as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending.
Employers who do not offer coverage would be required to pay 8% of each uninsured worker's salary.
Individuals who refused to buy affordable coverage would be assessed as much as 2.5% of their adjusted gross income, up to the cost of an average health insurance plan, according to the legislation.
Eventually, all individuals and employers would be offered the option of joining the public plan. The insurance industry says that would drive many private insurers out of business.
Obama told the committee's chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, on Monday at the White House he wants legislation by week's end.
Does this seem a little like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451?
The sweeping measure would impose penalties on employers who fail to provide health insurance for their workers and on individuals who refuse to buy it.
The bill also would require insurance companies to offer coverage, without exceptions or higher premiums in cases of pre-existing medical conditions. It also would allow the government to sell insurance in competition with private firms.
Key elements of the legislation include federal subsidies for poorer individuals and families to help them afford coverage.
Financing would come from a federal surtax on the upper income — up to 5.4% on the income of taxpayers making more than $1 million a year — as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending.
Employers who do not offer coverage would be required to pay 8% of each uninsured worker's salary.
Individuals who refused to buy affordable coverage would be assessed as much as 2.5% of their adjusted gross income, up to the cost of an average health insurance plan, according to the legislation.
Eventually, all individuals and employers would be offered the option of joining the public plan. The insurance industry says that would drive many private insurers out of business.
Obama told the committee's chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, on Monday at the White House he wants legislation by week's end.
Does this seem a little like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451?