UPDATED and BUMPED

For those of you who don’t have employer-provided insurance and who have decided to insure your kids instead of yourselves – if this bill becomes law drop the coverage for your kids and get it for yourself.

Why? Because as soon as the bill becomes law, it will be illegal to deny coverage to kids because of a pre-existing condition, so, if they get sick, you can buy the “insurance” coverage afterwards.

Adults, on the other hand, can still be denied because of a pre-existing condition for the next four years until the real coverage kicks in.

Why the discrepancy? Because Democrats had to make the numbers work out and delaying coverage for adults was a convenient method.

UPDATE!

It turns out the you really did have to wait until the health care reform bill was passed to find out what's in it. I took President Obama's word for it when he said that the bill would prohibit denying children coverage for pre-existing conditions immediately upon passage. It turns out that this is inaccurate.

Hours after President Barack Obama signed historic health care legislation, a potential problem emerged. Administration officials are now scrambling to fix a gap in highly touted benefits for children.

Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage.

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.

So, please ignore my practical advice for the time being. Maybe President Obama would've benefited from allowing the bill to be posted on the White House Web site for 5 days before signing like he promised.