Politics

USA TODAY: ?Health Consumers to Start Feeling Effects?

By Karina

Beginning tomorrow, many of the consumer protections in health reform ? known as the Patient?s Bill of Rights ? will begin to go into effect. An article in this morning?s USA TODAY highlights them:

Several key consumer protections under the nation’s new health law begin taking effect Thursday?

?Insurers can no longer set a dollar limit on the amount of care they’ll provide over a person’s lifetime or deny coverage to sick children. Young adults can stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26. And consumers get greater rights to appeal insurers’ decisions.

“It’s really putting in place long overdue consumer protections,” Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview with USA TODAY. “It’s getting rid of some of the worst rules of the industry that prevented people from getting covered at all or, at a time they needed coverage the most, limited the coverage they had.”

?The Thursday changes are designed to help consumers between now and 2014, when the most significant provisions of the health law take effect. That’s when new health insurance marketplaces, called exchanges, will be created and most Americans will be required to purchase insurance. “This is sort of a bridge strategy,” Sebelius said.

Congressional Republicans promise to take away guaranteed protections for millions of patients and put insurance companies back in charge of their health care decisions.

Read the full article and overview of key provisions»

Learn more about the Patient’s Bill of Rights»

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 22, 2010 (boomark / email).