Extending Coverage for Young Adults after September 23, 2010

Under the new healthcare law, young adults are now able to remain on their parent’s plan until they turn 26 years old. (In the case of existing group health plans, this right does not apply if the young adult is offered insurance at work.)

2012

Newest Benefits of the Affordable Care Act

Benefits and protections taking effect this year:

More Options for Seniors who Choose to Live at Home
January 1, 2012: The Affordable Care Act creates “Independence at Home” demonstration programs to test the effectiveness of physician and nurse practitioner directed home-based primary care for those Medicare beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions.

Strengthening Medicare and Preventing Waste, Fraud and Abuse
January 1, 2012: The Affordable Care Act strengthens prevention tactics against fraud and abuse with screening, oversight, and reporting and additional registration for providers and suppliers of services for these programs.

Tracking the Facts About Healthcare Disparities
March 23, 2012: In order to gain a better understanding of how factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, sex, primary language and environment affect our health, the Affordable Care Act enhances the requirements for reporting in these areas for Americans who receive their care through Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

No-Cost Preventive Services
The Affordable Care Act makes preventive care affordable and accessible for all Americans by requiring health plans to cover recommended preventive services without co-pays or premium costs. Before the law passed, too many Americans didn’t get the preventive health care they needed to stay healthy or avoid or delay the onset of disease. The preventive services included in this part of the law are regular pediatrician visits for children, cancer screening such as pap smears, mammograms and colonoscopy for adults, recommended immunizations, flu shots, healthy diet counseling and obesity screening.

August 2012: Additional preventive services specific to women, such as screening for gestational diabetes and contraception, will be covered by new health plans and will not require co-pays.

Easy-to-Read Coverage Summaries for Consumers
September 23, 2012: Insurance is complicated and often the language used by insurance companies is difficult to understand, incredibly detailed, and very lengthy. It is nearly impossible to use this information to compare plans. The Affordable Care Act requires private individual and group plans to provide a short, easy to read uniform summary of benefits and coverage to all health insurance applicants and enrollees. Having access to this information in layman’s language is key to understanding coverage and choosing the plan that is best.

Still To Come… 2013

Implementation of Services for Women:
Currently existing health insurance policies as of August 1, 2013 and in new health plans beginning in August 2012 will allow women who are not able to access reproductive health services through their employer to receive this coverage through their insurance company.

Improves preventive healthcare coverage by providing new funding to states that provide preventive services to Medicaid recipients at little or no cost.

Healthcare plans must start using electronic records to reduce administrative costs and streamline services.

Strengthens America’s primary care doctor network by requiring states to pay primary care physicians the same rate Medicare pays.

For more info visit www.seiu.org/a/the-healthcare-law-timeline.php