The health care reform bill will immediately begin to lower health care costs for American families and small businesses.

• In 2010 small businesses that choose to offer coverage will begin to receive tax credits of up to 35 percent of premiums to help make employee coverage more affordable.

• In 2010 adults who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions will have access to affordable insurance through a temporary high-risk pool.

• Starting this year, new private plans will be required to provide free preventive care: No co-payments and no deductibles for preventive services. And beginning Jan. 1, 2011, Medicare will do the same.

• In 2010 the bill will provide help for early retirees by creating a temporary reinsurance program to help offset the costs of coverage for retirees age 55-64.

Under health care reform, Americans will see an immediate expansion of coverage

• Children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health insurance coverage. The bill outlaws that practice for new health plans as well as grandfathered group plans. Moving forward, no insurance company can deny children coverage based on their health.

• Health care plans that provide coverage for children must allow young people to remain on their parents’ insurance policy up until their 26th birthday.

• Insurance companies will be banned from dropping people from coverage when they get sick, and they will be banned from implementing lifetime caps on coverage. Also, restrictive annual limits on coverage will be banned.

• Funding for community health centers will increase so that nearly double the number of patients can be treated in their community health centers over the next five years. Funding begins in the next fiscal year.

• The number of primary care doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants will increase through new investments. Funding takes effect in the next fiscal year.

Health reform will immediately curb some of the worst insurance industry practices and strengthen consumer protections.

• The bill creates a new, independent appeals process that ensures consumers in new private plans have access to an effective process to appeal decisions made by their insurer.

• Starting Jan. 1, 2011, insurers in the individual and small group market will be required to spend 80 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Insurers in the large group market will be required to spend 85 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Insurers who don’t meet those thresholds will be required to provide rebates to their policyholders.

• Discrimination based on salary will be outlawed. New group health plans will be prohibited from establishing any eligibility rules for health care coverage that discriminate in favor of higher-wage employees.

• Insurance companies will be held accountable for unreasonable rate hikes. Starting in 2011, states can require insurance companies to submit justification for all requested premium increases.

A quick look at new law’s long-term benefits

• This is a victory for American families, for seniors, for workers, and small businesses – for citizens who deserve the security of knowing that in this country, neither illness nor accident should endanger the American dream.

• The passage of health insurance reform legislation represents a historic victory for the American people – a victory over the special interests that have fought for decades to prevent families and businesses from having control over their health care or the health care of their workers.

• The legislation reins in the worst excesses and abuses of the insurance industry with some of the toughest consumer protections this country has ever known.

• It will hold insurance companies accountable to keep premiums down and prevent denials of care and coverage, including for pre-existing conditions.

• It will make health insurance affordable for middle class families and small businesses with one of largest tax cuts for health care in history – reducing premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

• It will at last provide the security of knowing that if you lose your job, change your job or start that new business, you’ll always be able to purchase quality, affordable care in a new, competitive health insurance market that keeps costs down.