Thursday, September 30, 2010

Getting a handle on health care reform's impact on our families

All of us with special needs children are doing our best to understand health care legislation. Just our luck that we'll have it all memorized and then the Repubs will claim victory in November and try to roll back the clock on this issue -- that's what they've promised. So good at undoing -- so bad at doing.

The following info comes from the Statewide Family and Consumer Networks Technical Assistance Center. It features great links to help families grok the ins and outs of health care reform. Thanks to Peggy Nickell at Wyoming UPLIFT for passing this along:

Links to Resources on Healthcare Reform

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed The Affordable Care Act into law. This comprehensive healthcare reform law includes many provisions that will impact children, youth and their families. Many websites have been developed and updated with information designed to help families and healthcare consumers navigate these changes. The following are links to sites that provide extremely helpful guidance on the new healthcare reform law and implementation:

 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has developed a website dedicated to helping people better understand the new healthcare law. It includes a section titled Families with Children that provides resources on a variety of topics. Here is a link to that section of the website: http://www.healthcare.gov/foryou/family/index.html.

 The Kaiser Family Foundation has created a new section of their website titled Explaining the Basics of Health Reform. It includes multiple resources to help explain many of the complex provisions included in the law. Here is a link to that section of the website: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/basics.cfm#explaininghealthcarereformseries.

 The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law has developed a health reform section of their website that helps to explain the comprehensive provisions of the law and includes links to other websites that also provide helpful analysis. Here is a link to the Bazelon site: http://www.bazelon.org/Where-We-Stand/Access-to-Services/Health-Care-Reform/Final-Law-and-Implementation-.aspx.

 The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare has added a Policy Issues and Resource section to their website dedicated to the recently enacted healthcare reform law. This section of the website also includes access to archived Webinars on Healthcare Reform. Here is a link to the website: http://www.thenationalcouncil.org/cs/healthcare_reform.

 Resources developed as part of a joint project of The George Washington University's Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have been posted to a website titled Health Reform GPS ~ Navigating Implementation. Here is the link to the website: http://www.healthreformgps.org/.

 Families USA has created a section of their website titled Health Reform Central ~ The Road to Implementation that includes a series of helpful resources. Here is a link to the website: http://www.familiesusa.org/health-reform-central/.

1 comment:

Parag said...

Obama was talking the health Care plan on ABC: what he wants is one-size-fits-all procedures that physicians would have to follow at the risk of not being paid by the government. And the government would increasingly be the payer if Obama's proposed 'public option' health insurance crowds out, as it inevitably will, private health insurers forced to compete with a tax-subsidized government entity.
Cons of new health care reform