Sunday, 18 December 2011
Obama Gives States A Say In Mandated Health Care Benefits
President Obama announced on Dec. 16 that the individual states will have a major say on health-care benefits under the new health insurance law. He said each state will be able to set the minimum essential benefits that insurance companies will be required to provide its customers. Instead of the government defining what benefits must be offered across the nation the responsibility will lie with each state.
This means that the necessary benefits will likely vary quite a bit from state to state, similar to the differences in current Children's Health Insurance and Medicaid programs. Many consumer groups criticized the announcement as they feel Americans could end up with substandard health insurance coverage. But on the other side of the fence, insurers and employers are afraid that the opposite could be true if a state requires expensive, comprehensive benefits to be provided.
According to an article by the Seattle Times, the government didn’t get into any specific details when announcing the plan, but some of the fundamental benefits that have to be included are emergency services, inpatient, outpatient, childhood and maternity care along with prescription drugs and preventive screenings and labs. Substance-abuse and mental-health treatments also need to be covered along with rehabilitation for cognitive and physical disorders and vision and dental care for children. All of these benefits need to be included on new small-business and personal health plans that are bought starting in 2014.
The Health and Human Services said the states will be able to come up with coverage benefit options which meet the unique needs of their state. This may lead to some states offering coverage for things such as in vitro fertilization and chiropractic therapy while other states choose not to. However, there are 10 specific coverage areas that have been mandated. This means many Americans will receive minimum coverage they may not be receiving at the moment for things such as prescription-drugs and maternity care.
It’s estimated that millions of Americans will benefit from some of the added coverage since many consumers don’t have maternity care and prescription drug benefits with their current policies.
