Unless you purchased your health insurance before March 23, 2010 your health insurance will change under Obamacare. Obamacare requires that all health insurance sold after January 1, 2014 include 10 essential health insurance benefits. In addition there are a number of new taxes and fees that will be added to the cost of your policy which will raise the cost by approximately $25 per month per insured person.
These are the 10 new essential health benefits:
1.Outpatient care: the kind you get without being admitted to a hospital
2.Emergency services
3.Treatment in the hospital for inpatient care
4.Maternity and newborn care
5.Mental health and substance use disorder services
6.Prescription drugs
7.Rehabilitative services and devices including physical and occupational therapy, speech-language pathology and psychiatric rehabilitation
8.Laboratory services (limited)
9.Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management
10.Pediatric services, including dental and vision care
If it has not already, it eventually will unless there are further delays or changes to the Affordable Care Act. Granted, those who have plans that were in place before the passage of the law on March 23, 2010 can technically keep these policies in effect. That assumes your insurance carrier doesn't phase out such policies and that you make essentially no changes to the policy. You may recall there was quite a national uproar over this issue late in 2013 that prompted President Obama to kind of have to live up to his "if you like your policy you can keep it" promise so we have seen more renewal offers of existing pre-Obamacare policies since then in the individual and small group marketplaces.
And this does kind of trap these policyholders. ObanaCare compliant policies are generally significantly more expensive than their pre-Obamacare counterparts. So, you can experience some pretty significant rate increases on your old policy in some cases and still be marginally better off financially than moving to an ObamaCare compliant policy. I am certainly seeing this scenario play out in some cases.
For ObamaCare to have any vague chance of working financially they really need to pull as many people as possible into their pool. Continuing to allow the existence of non-compliant policies denies them this revenue stream and probably a healthier population that chooses to maintain such policies. So, regardless of the promises of politicians, consumers need to be vigilant if they have an old style policy that they want to keep. The pressure will continue to build to save you people who don't know better from your "trash" policies as the administration referred to them and to move you into the glorious world of ObamaCare.
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These are the 10 new essential health benefits:
1.Outpatient care: the kind you get without being admitted to a hospital
2.Emergency services
3.Treatment in the hospital for inpatient care
4.Maternity and newborn care
5.Mental health and substance use disorder services
6.Prescription drugs
7.Rehabilitative services and devices including physical and occupational therapy, speech-language pathology and psychiatric rehabilitation
8.Laboratory services (limited)
9.Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management
10.Pediatric services, including dental and vision care
And this does kind of trap these policyholders. ObanaCare compliant policies are generally significantly more expensive than their pre-Obamacare counterparts. So, you can experience some pretty significant rate increases on your old policy in some cases and still be marginally better off financially than moving to an ObamaCare compliant policy. I am certainly seeing this scenario play out in some cases.
For ObamaCare to have any vague chance of working financially they really need to pull as many people as possible into their pool. Continuing to allow the existence of non-compliant policies denies them this revenue stream and probably a healthier population that chooses to maintain such policies. So, regardless of the promises of politicians, consumers need to be vigilant if they have an old style policy that they want to keep. The pressure will continue to build to save you people who don't know better from your "trash" policies as the administration referred to them and to move you into the glorious world of ObamaCare.