WHITE HOUSE SAYS HEALTH REFORM HAS HELPED MILLIONS OF WOMEN WITH PREVENTIVE CARE

The photo and excerpt are from the White House website:

President Obama’s health reform law requires that new health insurance plans cover preventive services with no co-pay or deductible. In the last 18 months, approximately 20.4 million women with private health insurance have received preventive health services such as mammograms and pap smears at no additional cost because of this provision in the Affordable Care Act.

Besides improving access to services that help women stay healthy and detect health problems early on, health reform helps women in many other ways. For example, health insurance companies can no longer discriminate against women by charging them higher premiums than they charge men. Insurance companies are banned from imposing a limit on the amount of care they’ll cover over a woman’s lifetime, and are now required to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on care—not overhead.

Women who have been unable to purchase health insurance because of a pre-existing condition such as cancer or having been pregnant now have an option to obtain the insurance they need through the new Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan.

Beginning in 2014, the Affordable Care Act will be fully implemented and offer even greater protection for women and their health care, including a ban on denying care based on pre-existing conditions, and the removal of annual limits on care.

DHHS SAYS NO MORE LIFETIME CAPS ON HEALTH BENEFITS

The following excerpt is from the Department of Health and Human Services:

“Health reform law ends lifetime limits for 105 million Americans
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released a new report today on how the health reform law has eliminated lifetime limits on coverage for more than 105 million Americans. Before health reform, many Americans with serious illnesses such as cancer risked hitting the lifetime limit on the dollar amount their insurance companies would cover for their health care benefits.

“For years, Americans with lifetime caps imposed on their health insurance benefits have had to live with the fear that if an illness or accident happened, they could max out their health coverage when they needed it the most,” said Secretary Sebelius.  “Now, because of the health care law, they no longer have to live in fear of that happening.”

The end of lifetime limits is one of many new consumer rights and protections in the law for Americans nationwide.  In the report, HHS provides data on the number of people in each state that benefit from this component of the law.  The Obama administration also released updated state data on other ways the new law has impacted Americans, including the number of people with Medicare receiving new preventive benefits and the various grants awarded to states.

While some plans provided coverage without dollar limits on lifetime benefits, 105 million Americans were previously in health plans that had lifetime limits.  HHS estimates that 70 million people in large employer plans, 25 million people in small employer plans, and 10 million people with individually purchased health insurance had lifetime limits on their health benefits prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
This includes 39.5 million women and 28 million children; 11.8 million Latinos and 10.4 million African Americans.”