The majority of health insurance policies sold today aren’t meeting the requirements of the healthcare laws.
A the most recent insurance news report published in Health Affairs has shown that over 50 percent of all individual policies that are currently being sold would not qualify for the health care reform overhaul’s required health exchanges because they do not meet the coverage criteria of the Affordable Care Act.
Respected publications across the country are finding this same issue to be present.
Some of those publications have included the following articles:
• The New York Times reported in their article “Individual Health Policies Fall Short, A Study Finds,” that not only are over half of the individual health insurance policies unable to meet the standards, but if the Supreme Court should overturn the healthcare law, the plans provided through employers will still be superior to those that are purchased individually.
• The National Journal published “Report: Most Individual Health Plans Cover Less Than Health Care Law Requires” and pointed out that most of the policies being purchased today by individuals (not through employers) would not be able to be sold in 2014 though the state exchanges. That information was based on a study funded by the Commonwealth Fund.
• Even Bloomberg put out an article entitled “Insurers Must Improve Benefits for new Health Exchanges”, in which it stated that the companies participating in the exchanges, such as WellPoint Inc., and UnitedHealth Group Inc., will need to improve the benefits that they are offering so that they will provide at least 60 percent of an individual’s care if they intend to qualify. At the moment, they have yet to reach that degree of coverage.
• Kaiser Health News added an article to its website which included a video called “Can I Continue My Health Insurance After Quitting My Job”, which was a response to an individual who intended to quit his job in order to remain at home and care for his wife who had received a breast cancer diagnosis, comparing his health insurance benefits while employed to what he would have available to him if he left his work.
