The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will expand access to coverage and take steps toward delivery system reform, but will raise costs and disrupt coverage for individual market customers, employers, and seniors.
Tens of millions of Americans will gain access to health insurance, a goal that health plans have long supported. The ACA also includes a number of important consumer protections that many health plans implemented before they were required by law, such as the provision allowing young adults up to the age of 26 to stay on their parents’ policies.
The new law takes a number of preliminary, but promising, steps toward reforming the delivery system to improve patient safety and quality in Medicare and Medicaid. Many of these initiatives build on successful private-sector programs that health plans have pioneered and implemented.
The ACA also includes major provisions that will raise costs and disrupt the coverage on which millions of people rely today. Many of these harmful provisions go into effect simultaneously on January 1, 2014 – meaning the potential exists for significant destabilization of insurance markets in many states, particularly for those who rely on individual and small group coverage.
Ultimately, the ACA coverage expansion will not be sustainable until policymakers and stakeholders take meaningful steps to reduce the rate of growth in medical costs.
To learn more about specific ACA provisions, please click on the links below: