In our health reform section we will cut through the politics, biases, and myths to help you understand health care reform as it stands today and what impacts in will have on you, your family, or your business. The regulations are subject to change and we expect many modifications.
Grandfathered Plans: In order to help pass health care reform, President Obama promised that if you liked your health plan you would be able to keep it. A plan that was in force prior to March 23, 2010 (and not changed 'significantly') can retain what is known as "grandfathered" status and will not be subject to some of the new rules that will apply to plans going forward. However, if a plan makes even one 'significant' change it will lose grandfathered status. We know now that very few plans will be able to retain grandfathered status for very long. Changes that will disqualify a plan's grandfathered status include: Raising co-insurance percentages, raising co-pays, raising deductibles, lowering employer contributions, lowering annual limits. Note: Some small (inflation) changes are allowed. Some reform provisions apply to all plans regardless of grandfatherd status: No limits on 'essential benefits', coverage for pre-existing conditions of children up to 19, rules regarding rescission, extension of coverage for adult children to age 26. COMMENT: President Obama promised that people could keep their health plan, but he never said it would be easy. We don't know right now if it's even worth the effort to keep a grandfathered plan around. The cost and paperwork requirements of keeping the old plan may exceed the benefit of changing.
Preventative Care: Early detection is proven to help save lives and reduce the severity of many conditions. While not perfect, preventative care services are intended to help diagnose many common cancers, diseases, and conditions early when they are more treatable rather than at an advanced stage where symptoms are already evident. To encourage greater use of preventative care, the health reform act requires plans to cover a variety of preventative services (from network providers) with no out-of-pocket cost to the patient. Below is a list of services that are currently required. COMMENT: This applies to non-grand fathered plans. Many current plans (including HSA's) already provide preventative care services. While we support the use of preventative serivces there's no such thing as 'free'. There's always a cost, if not paid by the patient, the cost will be borne somewhere else. Artificial incentives create skewed results. Already, companies are lobbying to get their particular service, device, treatment or drug on the preventative care list.
