Healthcare Reform News

If you’ve been holding off getting screened for high cholesterol, diabetes or hypertension because of a co-payment, you soon won’t have a reason to put it off.

That’s because co-payments, which typically cost at least $20, for a host of preventive services will disappear starting Jan. 1 for most workers thanks to the Affordable Care Act. For others, they’re already seeing that benefit under the new health law, or soon will if they bought a new individual policy or have renewed in the last month.

Americans are noticing this and other changes to their health plans as they go through open enrollment, the annual fall ritual that allows workers with coverage to change their benefits.

Repeal of the federal health-care overhaul was central to many Republican campaigns this season. But even with the House changing hands, health insurers, drug companies and hospitals said they were planning as if the law will stick.

“A wholesale repeal of health-care reform would be likely very, very difficult to achieve and we’re not anticipating that’s going to happen,” said John Lechleiter, chief executive of drug maker Eli Lilly & Co.

The federal health reform law could expand Medi-Cal eligibility and enrollment to cover as many as 10.5 million Californians by 2019, according to a new report by the California Budget Project, “California Watch Blog” reports. Medi-Cal is California’s Medicaid program.

The health reform law allows Californians with annual incomes at or below 138% of the federal poverty level to enroll in Medi-Cal starting in 2014.

The health law aims to encourage employees to get routine preventive screenings and checkups that could ultimately help lower health care costs. Treating patients after being diagnosed with an ailment or disease is much more costly than prevention efforts. That’s why an increasing number of companies are willing to swallow the added costs of covering preventive services and have been offering many checkups and screenings to their employees at no cost.

When you examine your health plan options during open enrollment season this fall, you may get sticker shock from the increases in both the premiums and the cost-sharing for services. Even benefits that are increasing under the health-care overhaul may come with financial strings attached. If you’re one of the roughly half of workers with a choice of more than one health plan, or if you’re just trying to gauge what you may have to pay to keep your family healthy next year, here’s what to look out for:

• Higher Premiums
• Higher Deductibles
• More Coinsurance
• Extra For Dependents
• Emphasis On Wellness

Sometime after July 1, these Californians will have a new chance at coverage. Under the national health care overhaul, California will establish a new insurance pool that will offer subsidized health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions. This will be in addition to the state’s existing high-risk pool, whose scope and benefits are severely limited by funding.

The Congressional Budget Office says the new health care bill will be deficit neutral. But economists aren’t sure. What are the financial pros and cons of the bill?

Here’s a look at the pros and cons of how the reforms might affect the pocketbooks of Americans as taxpayers and as health care consumers.