Obama close to health success

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• Cost | $940 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

  How many covered | 32 million uninsured. Major coverage expansion begins in 2014. When fully phased in, 95 percent of eligible Americans would have coverage, compared with 83 percent today.

  Insurance mandate | Almost everyone is required to be insured or else pay a fine. There is an exemption for low-income people. Mandate takes effect in 2014.

  Insurance market reforms | Starting this year, insurers would be forbidden from placing lifetime dollar limits on policies, from denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions and from canceling policies because someone gets sick. Parents can keep older kids covered up to age 26. A new high-risk pool would offer coverage to uninsured people with medical problems until 2014, when the cov erage expansion goes into high gear. Major consumer safeguards would also take effect in 2014. Insurers would be prohibited from denying coverage to people with medical problems or charging them more and could not charge women more.

  Taxes | Dramatically scales back a Senate-passed tax on high-cost insurance plans that was opposed by House Democrats and labor unions. The tax would be delayed until 2018, and the thresholds at which it is imposed would be $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. To make up for the lost revenue, the bill applies an increased Medicare payroll tax to investment income as well as wages for individuals making more than $200,000, or married couples above $250,000. The tax on investment income would be 3.8 percent.

  Prescription drugs | Gradually closes the "dou ghnut hole" coverage gap in the Medicare prescri ption drug benefit that seniors fall into once they have spent $2,830. Sen iors who hit the gap this year will get a $250 re bate. Starting in 2011, seniors in the gap receive a discount on brand name drugs, initially 50 percent. When the gap is elimin ated in 2020, sen iors will pay 25 percent of the cost of medi cations until Medi care's catastrophic coverage kicks in.

  Employer responsibility | As in the Senate bill, businesses are not required to offer coverage. Instead, employers are hit with a fee if the government subsidizes their workers' coverage. The $2,000-per-employee fee would be assessed on the company's entire work force, minus an allowance. Companies with 50 or fewer workers are exempt. Part-time workers are included in the calculations, counting two part-timers as one full-time worker.

  Choosing insurance | Small businesses, the self-employed and the uninsured could pick a plan offered through new state-based purchasing pools called exchanges, opening in 2014. The exchanges offer the purchasing power empl oyees of big companies benefit from. People working for bigger firms would not see big changes. If they lose their jobs or go out on their own, they may be eligible for subsidized coverage through exchanges.

  Government-run plan | No government-run insurance plan.

  Abortion | The bill tries to maintain a separation between taxpayer dollars and private premiums that would pay for abortion coverage. No health plan would be required to offer coverage for abortion. In plans that do cover abortion, policyholders would have to pay for it separately, with money kept in a separate account from taxpayer money.