The historic Affordable Care Act (ACA) puts the country on the path toward quality, affordable health care for all Americans.
- It stops insurance companies from denying health care due to pre-existing conditions and dropping coverage for people who get sick, and it eliminates annual and lifetime coverage caps.
- It provides an incentive for employers to provide health coverage by penalizing employers that do not provide coverage when a worker is eligible for subsidized health care.
- It slows the relentless rise in
health care costs
and reduces the number of uninsured Americans by 33 million. It is projected to reduce the federal budget deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next two decades.
- Reform already is
helping
working families:
- 2.5 million more young adults have health coverage because parents can keep dependents on their plans until age 26;
- 54 million additional Americans received preventive services coverage without required cost-sharing;
- 50,000 “high-risk” individuals were able to obtain coverage through a pre-existing condition insurance plan in their state;
- Consumers will save $1.2 billion to $2 billion in 2011 through premium rebates or premium reductions under the medical loss ratio rules;
- 10,700 “rescissions” were prevented—meaning individuals’ coverage cannot be dropped because of unintentional mistakes on their applications;
- Premium assistance was provided for the coverage of more than 13 million older adults under the early retiree reinsurance program; and
- 3.6 million
Medicare
beneficiaries saved more than $2.1 billion on prescription drugs in the Part D “donut hole.”
- New quality measurement tools are under development to improve the quality of health care, and innovations such as Accountable Care Organizations are being developed to promote more cost-effective delivery of health care.
- As the Obama administration implements health care reform, it has achieved a record high in the number of federal health care fraud prosecutions, reporting 1,235 new cases for fiscal year 2011.
Read more about health care and health care reform
here
.
