What are the Essential Benefits of the Health Care Reform?

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What is health care reform? Health care reform is considered a general rubric that is used in discussing major health policy creation as well as changes in the government that can affect the health care delivery system in a particular place. In the United States, endless debates have surfaced due to issues with regards to the right of health care access, fairness, sustainability, quality as well as the amount of money spent by the government. But the question is; what are the essential benefits of health care reform?

Health Care Reform Advantages

There are actually a lot of benefits that can be delivered by the health care reform. In the US, the health care reform was passed last March 2010. Since then, noticeable effects and benefits have already been observed. Some of these benefits include the following:
• Insurance to People with Pre-existing Condition – With the passing of the health care reform, adults who are considered by private insurers as “high risk” due to their prior and/or current health problems and have been uninsured for the last 6 years are already eligible to purchase insurance through the federal Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan or the PCIP within their specified state.
• Preventive Care and Screening or Diagnostic Tests Coverage – Individuals who were able to have Medicare Part B as well as those who are covered by private and/or employer sponsored health plans are considered eligible for free. These advantages include having preventive and wellness benefits such as screenings and diagnostics for diseases like diabetes and cancer as well as immunizations. These are also for free without any deductibles and copayments.
• Medicare Discounts – those people with Medicare Part D that falls under the prescription drug coverage gap can enjoy a 50 percent discount in most brand name prescription drugs and biological medicines. They can also enjoy a 7 percent discount on all generic drugs. The gap will start once the insured as well as the insurer have already spent a combined total of 2,840 dollars on all prescriptions. Once the customer’s total drug cost has reached a total of 4,550 dollars, the prescription costs will drop to a lower copay for the remainder of the year.
• Protection from Insurance Cancellations – one of the most common practice or works of most insurers who wish to deny any payments for costly medical care is to re-examine customer’s initial applications and/or cancel or annul the policies. However, with the implementation of the health care reform, health care laws already prohibits the insurers from rescinding a customer’s health coverage due to unintentional errors or mistakes and/or minor omissions of an application.
• Elimination of Lifetime Limits on Care – Aside from not being able to cancel or annul the policies, insurers can also no longer limit the amount of their payment in essential medical benefits over the person’s lifetime.
• Higher Threshold for the Annual Limits in Care – with the health care reform, most insurance plans are already obliged to cover medical expenses up to September 2011 up to at least 750,000 dollars per year.
• Coverage on Young Adults Aged 26 and Below – Young adults who are not able to access an employer health plan is able to use a parent’s health insurance policy up until 26 years of age. Their marital status and present residence will also not matter in this condition. Most insurance plans before only accept adults under the family policies under the age of 18 or before entering college, but with the change of age range to 26, more young adults are able to enjoy the benefits of the family policies even after college graduation.

These are just some of the helpful benefits of the health care reform. Having all these necessary health benefits, we can already see the health care system will definitely get better.

Summary

The health care reform seeks to accomplish the following:
• Widen the population or the number of people who can receive the health care coverage through the public sector insurance programs or the private sector insurance companies.
• Broaden the array of health care providers that the consumers or the insured can choose among.
• Enhance the access of consumers to all the health care specialists.
• Improvise the quality of the health care system
• Provide more care and treatment to all the citizens covered by such reform
• Decrease or minimize the cost of health care.

These are the wonderful benefits that we could expect to have under as an effect of the passing of the health care reform. With this change in the health care system, we can definitely expect a significant difference in the delivery of care to all the people and/or citizens of the country.