Sec. Kathleen Sebelius: How a Health Care Law Protects You


Today outlines a commencement of National Consumer Protection Week, that creates this a ideal time to speak about some of a new rights and protections Americans have underneath a Affordable Care Act.

Beginning Oct. 1, 2013, you’ll be means to emporium for health word and examination skeleton by a Health Insurance Marketplace in your state. You’ll see adult front what opposite skeleton are expected to cost we and have a event to enroll in a devise we confirm is right for you. Should we need assistance classification by your options, there will now be people accessible to support you.

To assistance you, your family, friends, and neighbors get prepared for enrollment in a devise that we select by a Health Insurance Marketplace, we can find out some-more and pointer adult for email and content updates by visiting https://signup.healthcare.gov/.

The Affordable Care Act also gives we larger control over a caring we receive. By requiring insurers to yield we with an easy-to-understand outline of your health plan’s advantages and coverage — including a glossary of word terms — we will have a information we need to weigh your options.

The health caring law prohibits some of a misfortune word attention practices that have kept affordable health coverage out of strech for millions of Americans when they indispensable it most. For example, in a past, word companies could repudiate we coverage since we were ill or had a pre-existing condition. Starting in 2014, a law creates it bootleg for word companies to repudiate we coverage since of a pre-existing condition. New protections germane to many skeleton commencement in 2014 will also forestall word companies from charging we some-more since of your gender or occupation.

Because of a law, it’s already bootleg for word companies to repudiate coverage to children underneath age 19 since of a pre-existing condition, or to cancel your coverage since we done an honest mistake on your application. The law also ensures your right to interest health word devise decisions.

In addition, word companies can no longer put a lifetime dollar extent on many of a advantages we accept and starting in 2014, insurers will be taboo from commanding annual dollar limits.

The law also prevents word companies from lifting your reward rates but burden or transparency. The law requires word companies in each state to publicly yield easy-to-understand information to their business about their reasons for poignant rate increases, and any irrational rate increases are posted online. We know this is working. The series of requests for word reward increases of 10 percent or some-more has forsaken dramatically, from 75 percent to 14 percent.

This rate examination module works in and with a 80/20 rule, that requires word companies to generally spend 80 percent of premiums on health caring (rather than CEO salaries and marketing) or yield rebates to their customers. Insurance companies that did not accommodate a 80/20 order have supposing scarcely 13 million Americans with some-more than $1.1 billion in rebates. Americans receiving a remission have benefited from an normal remission of $151 per household.

Many elements of a Affordable Care Act strengthen consumers and make a health word marketplace work improved for individuals, families, and tiny businesses. Because of a Affordable Care Act, some-more Americans than ever before will have entrance to peculiarity health word they can afford.

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