The Affordable Care Act: One Year Later

Greetings, folks!

Hope y'all had a Happy Easter or otherwise just a plain peaceful weekend. It's been a little while since we last chatted, mostly since home health care news hasn't been too exciting lately. That's why I figured we would talk about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), now that it's been around for a year. After all, we only recently got the news that college kids can stay on their parents' health insurance until they're 26 now. Now, I'll be primarily looking at Florida for the "Where are we now?" update in this post, since Reliance Home Health Care, LLC is based in Florida, but if you want any more general information, as always, just ask. Anyways, we'll be gathering our intelligence from here. I'm looking at a specific pdf on the site that you need to navigate to, but if you really want to check my facts, I'll tell you how to find it. All right, here we go...

Here are a few things the ACA has done/is doing for us, assuming you're American and have insurance:

• Nearly everyone with Medicare gets free preventative services -- the website lists examples like mammograms and colonoscopies -- and a free annual wellness visit with their doctor. Of the 44 million folks with Medicare, 3.3 million are from Florida.
• If you hit the prescription drug coverage gap, which the White House fondly calls "The Donut Hole", you should've gotten a $250 rebate (tax free!). Also, if it happens again this year, you'll get half off of the brand name prescriptions. So, no need to run to Canada to get your prescriptions filled! They're planning on filling in the donut hole entirely by 2020.
• If you're one of the nearly 300,000 small businesses in Florida, you can get some of the $40 billion in tax credits that'll help you afford insurance premiums and help you get coverage for your employees.
• Basically, governors get a bunch of Federal funds to help their state. Florida's already gotten $110.4 million (as of the time the source was written). Here's the breakdown:
•  $1 million to plan for a Health Insurance Exchange
•  $1 million to crack down on unreasonable insurance premium increases
•  $14.5 million to support capital development in community health centers 
•  $22 million from the Prevention and Public Health Fund
•  $26.2 million in Therapeutic Discovery Project Program Tax Credits and Grants
•  $1.4 million for Medicare improvements for patients and providers
•  $1.7 million for demonstration projects to address health professions workforce needs
•  $515,013 for aging and disability resource centers 
•  $3 million to implement the National Background Check Program for long term care workers
•  $3.4 million for Maternal, Infant and Childhood Home Visiting
•  $35.7 million for the Money Follows the Person demonstration project
• Kids with pre-existing conditions are now covered. By 2014, this should extend to adults as well. If you're a Florida resident and an adult with a pre-existing condition, you're probably eligible for coverage now. Click here to find out more.
• No more lifetime limits. That means insurance companies can't cap your coverage because you have cancer or a chronic illness. Annual limits are also restricted and will be done away with by 2014.
• Insurance companies can no longer drop you when you get sick because of a mistake you made on an application.
• Now, insurance companies have to pay 80% of premiums on health care and quality improvements. This obviously doesn't include marketing, executive salaries or overhead, so this should be a big change for insurance companies. If they don't do this, you get a rebate or lower premiums. So, basically, you win or you...well, win. So long as this is enforced, of course.
• Insurance companies now have to publicly justify "unreasonable" premium increases. No word on where the line is drawn to become "unreasonable," or what would happen if their public justification was "we wanted more money," but I guess we'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.
• More jobs.
• Many early retirees can now get insurance from their previous employers.
• Community health centers get more funding.
• For those of you thinking about going into the health care field as doctors, nurses, therapists, or in other careers, there are now even more grants and scholarships, as well as other support, for you to ensure you're able to help folks get better.

So, that's the Affordable Care Act broken down for you. America's health care system may still have a long way to go, but this is a pretty good start. Well, unless you're an insurance company, of course.