Q:  I currently get my health insurance from work. I like it and would like to keep it.  How does the new health care law affect me? Will anything change?

A:  It’s very likely that nothing will change for you.

However, just like before the law, employers are still allowed to change carriers and the types of insurance they offer; still allowed to change the percentage of your share of premiums, as well as actual benefits.   They’re allowed to make those changes as long as they continue to offer the basic benefits the law requires.  These requirements, which were already under effect, include access to preventive care (without co-pays or deductibles), coverage of unemployed adult children until age 26, and no lifetime caps on benefits.

Will your employer choose to switch things around? That’s hard to predict.  But I don’t see a good business reason for anything beyond the customary “shopping around” before renewal each year.

There are many aspects of the law whose effect is difficult to predict. For example, I think insurance premiums might stabilize in the next couple of years.  Why? Because come 2014, insurers won’t be able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing condition or charge them higher premiums.  They also can’t charge women more than men. That might have a restraining effect on prices.  In addition, insurers might have many more participants (younger, healthier) who’ll have the incentive to enroll in order to avoid the tax penalty.  That means more revenues, allowing costs to be spread more evenly. But who knows if that’s how it turns out, or how it will affect individual employees. I could be wrong.

Perhaps the opposite happens, and having to cover pre-existing conditions will send costs through the roof, and the younger and healthier people choose the tax over the health coverage.  Then insurance companies might raise their premiums even more.

Conflicting opinions about the law notwithstanding, the truth is no one knows exactly what the intended and unintended consequences will be until after a few years of implementation.

In the next few weeks, I plan first to explore how employees might be affected by the law, then we’ll cover possible effect on businesses.  Tune in.

Source: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org and  http://www.consumerreports.org/ recommended further reading.

© Copyright Eva Del Rio