CFO Web Site on Health Care Changes

The state government of CFO Alex Sink has created a web site to inform Floridians of the new changes in health insurance since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act officially went into effect.

Currently, most health insurance policies have provisions stating that the maximum the insurer will pay during the life of the policy is $1 million or maybe $2 million. In addition, they have a maximum the insurer will pay in any calendar year, usually around $250,000. As of this Thursday, insurers will be prohibited from limiting the amount they will pay over the lifetime of the policy. However, until 2014, plans will still be allowed to have an annual limit on coverage payments.

All health plans will be prohibited from dropping consumers from coverage just because they get sick.

Children under the age of 19 with pre-existing medical conditions will no longer be denied coverage by employer plans or new plans in the individual market because of their pre-existing condition.

New private plans will be required to cover preventative services and neither copayments nor deductibles will apply to the cost of these services.

All new plans will have to provide consumers with two levels of appeal when the plan denies payment for medical services. The first level would be a review by the plan itself. The second level would be an independent review process in which an outside group of medical experts review the claim to determine whether the plan followed its own rules in denying the claim.

Employer health plans will be prohibited from establishing any eligibility rules for health care coverage that have the effect of discrimination in favor of higher wage employees.

Health plans will be required to allow young people to remain on their parents’ health plans up to their 26th birthday, provided that they do not have access to coverage on their own plan.

Consumers will have more freedom of choice in the selection of their physicians.

In 2011, insurance companies will have to use 80 percent of revenue from health insurance policies for improving health care. How that will be used could be a potential loophole for many companies. Seniors on Medicare Part D will receive a 50 percent discount for brand name drugs.



The Medicare Part D deal is actually bad. The White House, Max Baucus and pharmaceutical industry made this deal. The document was leaked to Ryan Grim of ">The Huffington Post.