Health Care Reform: One Year Later

This video about health reform was created by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the signing of the federal Affordable Care Act. While some key provisions are not yet in place, children and families already have been affected by the new law, especially children with special health care needs.

In California, 8% of children with special needs are uninsured, and among those who are insured, 35% of have inadequate coverage, according to 2007 data. These children may be uninsured because they are denied coverage on the open market – health insurers tend to reject children with pre-existing conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, and autism, due to higher costs of care for these children. However, since the signing of the Affordable Care Act, approximately 576,500 California children with pre-existing conditions are now protected, according to Families USA; under the new law, insurers no longer can deny health coverage to these children.

Some other health reform provisions affecting children and families already have been implemented as well, including:

• Parents now can keep children on their health insurance policies until age 26. This helps reduce the rate of uninsurance among older teens and young adults.
• Insurers cannot charge co-payments, deductibles, or co-insurance for certain preventive care, thereby reducing families’ out-of-pocket expenses.
• Insurance companies cannot drop coverage for people who are sick.
• There are no longer lifetime limits on coverage.

See what other changes lie ahead under the Affordable Care Act with this timeline.

Tags: Child Health Issues

Posted by Jordan Handcox

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 11:15 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.