More than 5,500 health plan holders in the state can expect to receive their refund in some form.
The latest from the health care reform will come in the form of insurance rebates that will apply to more than 5,500 people in Delaware, which means that they will each receive their portion of a total of $734,278.
These refunds are required of five insurance companies in the state that failed to comply with a federal benchmark.
The goal of that portion of the health care reform was to help to make certain that insurers were spending the majority of the money coming in from premiums on providing quality care to those they are covering through their plans. The Affordable Care Act has dictated that insurers are required to spend over 80 percent of their premiums on the costs associated with medical care within the individual and small business market. That figure rises to 85 percent in the large group market. Should they fail to meet that goal, they must compensate their customers with insurance rebates.
The health care law requires that the insurance rebates for the so called 80/20 rule must occur by August 1.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced that insurers across the country owe a total of 6,816,423 customers their refunds. The total amount to be divided among them is $332 million. The department said that in Delaware, there are 5,886 people who can expect to receive their refunds in one of the acceptable forms.
That said, it should be pointed out that this amount has decreased considerably since the first year in which this element of the health care reform went into place. In 2011, there were 5,639 customers in Delaware who were owed their rebates, but the amount that had to be paid to them by their insurers was more than twice as much, at $1,846,989.
The figure had already dropped to $1,361,054 in 2012, which was paid to 4,096 customers. This year, while the number of customers who are receiving the insurance rebates has gone up, this is likely a reflection of the increase in the total number of insured individuals in the state. The total figure is dramatically down from previous years.
