8 Biggest Mix-Ups about Health Care Reform


The law does call for the creation of new insurance plans, but the government won’t run them, Chollet says. “The federal
Office of Personnel Management is required to contract with at least two private insurance carriers, including at least one nonprofit, to offer coverage in every market nationwide,” she explains. “They can contract with more than two, and some of these nonprofits are consumer-owned and operated health plans called co-ops.”
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4) Business
befuddlement

Fiction: All businesses will be required to provide employee health insurance.

Fact: The Affordable Care Act
does not require employers to provide health coverage.

However, it does impose a penalty on larger employers that either do not offer a plan or offer unaffordable coverage.

“The law specifically exempts all firms that have fewer than 50 employees — 96 percent of all firms in the United States, or 5.8 million out of 6 million total firms — from any employer responsibility requirements,” says Chiglinsky. “More than 96 percent of firms with 50 or more employees already offer health insurance to their workers. Less than 0.2 percent
of all firms (about 10,000 out of 6 million) may face employer responsibility requirements.”

The health care law features a variety of incentives meant
to encourage small businesses to insure their employees, including tax credits and access to more affordable plans through new Small Business Health Options Programs, or SHOPs, that will be part of the state insurance exchanges.

The SHOPs will give small businesses “the clout that big
businesses already enjoy when purchasing insurance,” Chiglinsky
adds.

 

5) Immigrant inaccuracy

Fiction:Undocumented immigrants will receive federal aid to purchase health insurance.

Fact: Undocumented immigrants are excluded
from health care reform.

And not only that, but they also are ineligible
to receive Medicaid insurance for the poor or to purchase health insurance with their own money in the state exchanges when those open in 2014.

Legal immigrants who have resided in the United States for less than five years are similarly ineligible for federal assistance, though the states have the option of extending coverage to pregnant women and children while they await legal status.

“Undocumented immigrants are still in the same difficult
situation they have always been in,” says Chollet.

6) ‘Death
panels’ notion lives on

Fiction: Health reform creates a “death panel” to make decisions about end-of-life care for seniors.

Fact: Early drafts of health care reform would
have allowed Medicare to reimburse physicians for time spent talking with older patients about advance care planning. But these provisions were eliminated in subsequent revisions.

“Given some political space, (the reimbursement)
would have been something that families and their doctors would have appreciated having. But it became so politicized so fast that it just threatened to sink the entire bill, so it was struck,” says Chollet.

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