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Speak Out
What do you think of the new health-care rules?
On Sept. 23, 2010, the first wave of President Obama’s health-care reforms takes effect for any new policies starting on or after that date; for existing policies, changes are effective Jan. 1, 2011.
The changes most likely to affect you: Children can stay on their parents’ health plan until they are 26; the end of lifetime limits that health-care providers can place on an individual; and insurers can no longer refuse coverage of preexisting conditions for children under the age of 19.
Also available for consumers with new plans are free immunizations for kids and free preventative care, such as mammograms and cholesterol screenings.
Previously, your parents’ coverage stopped when you turned 19, or if you were in college, when you finished your undergraduate studies.
Also, health-care providers could say that they would cover a person for, let’s say, $500,000 over a lifetime. Now suppose you were diagnosed with cancer, and the long, hard battle to rid yourself of the disease mounted up to $500,000 in health-care costs that your provider paid. You are free of cancer, but the health-care provider, under the old rules, could stop paying for coverage because you used up your lifetime limit.
So you switch health-care providers. The new company covers you, but only what is not related to your cancer because that is a preexisting condition. Which would be fine unless your cancer comes out of remission. Then you’d have to pay for all the medical expenses, which could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Under the new rules, none of this can happen. Now, health-care companies cannot place lifetime caps on coverage. Health-care providers can impose yearly limits, but they must be approved by the Department of Health and Human Services.
These reforms were put in place mainly to help children who have lifetime illnesses, such as cancer, diabetes, or a genetic disease.
In response, several health-care providers, such as Anthem Blue Cross, Aetna Inc. and Cigna, have stopped selling child-only policies in 10 states, including California, Illinois, Florida and Connecticut. The companies will still cover family policies and insurance provided through employers, but their action could affect as many as 500,000 children who do not have insurance.
Child-only policies are often purchased in one of three situations: When parents’ employers don’t offer coverage for children; when parents can’t afford to insure themselves; when parents can’t get their own coverage but want to cover their kids.
This means that if an uninsured child is stricken with a disease that may affect her for her entire life and her parents try to get insurance for her, some companies will refuse because they have stopped offering child-only policies.
The insurance companies say they will no longer offer child-only policies because the new health-care laws are too costly. "Unfortunately, this has created an un-level competitive environment," Anthem Blue Cross, California's largest for-profit insurer, said in a statement that declared its intention to “suspend the sale of child-only policies” on Sept. 23, six months after the health-care overhaul was signed.
”We made a decision to stop offering child-only policies to ensure that we can remain competitive in the 10 markets where we sell individual and family plans," Cigna spokeswoman Gwyn Dilday said in a Los Angeles Times interview. “We’ll continue to evaluate this policy and could reconsider changing this position as market dynamics change.”
Lawmakers, regulators, and health-care advocates say this will force more families to enroll in state-run public insurance programs such as Medi-Cali in California and All Kids in Illinois, essentially making the states and, ultimately, taxpayers help pay for health-care costs.
California Assemblyman Mike Feuer criticized the insurance companies, singling out Anthem Blue Cross. “At a time when we are launching a national approach to ensure that all children have access to health care, Anthem’s actions represent a step backwards,” Feuer said in a Los Angeles Times interview. “By threatening to drop child-only policies in California, the company jeopardizes the health of families and children. I call on Anthem to reconsider its plan.”
What do you think?
How will the new health-care laws affect you? How will extending your parents’ medical coverage until you are 26 help you? How will the free immunizations and preventative care help? What do you think about ending lifetime limits on coverage? What about the insurance companies ending child-only coverage in certain states?
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