When does the health-care bill go into effect?

Within a year
-- Provides a $250 rebate to Medicare prescription drug plan beneficiaries whose initial benefits run out.
90 days after enactment
-- Provides immediate access to high-risk pools for people who have no insurance because of preexisting conditions.
Six months after enactment
-- Bars insurers from denying people coverage when they get sick.
-- Bars insurers from denying coverage to children who have preexisting conditions.
-- Bars insurers from imposing lifetime caps on coverage.
-- Requires insurers to allow young people to stay on their parents' policies until age 26.2011
-- Requires individual and small group market insurance plans to spend 80 percent of premium dollars on medical services. Large group plans would have to spend at least 85 percent.
2013
-- Increases the Medicare payroll tax and expands it to dividend, interest and other unearned income for singles earning more than $200,000 and joint filers making more than $250,000.
2014
-- Provides subsidies for families earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level -- or, under current guidelines, about $88,000 a year -- to purchase health insurance.
-- Requires most employers to provide coverage or face penalties.
-- Requires most people to obtain coverage or face penalties.
2018
-- Imposes a 40 percent excise tax on high-end insurance policies.
By 2019
-- Expands health insurance coverage to 32 million people.
SOURCES: washingtonpost