Your insurance company can't drop you if you get sick.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law in early 2010, outlawing a key health insurance practice ---- discontinuing health insurance coverage to customers who become ill while covered by their company's plans. The new healthcare law was a hallmark of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who died of brain cancer months before the bill was passed and signed into law.
New Limitations on Insurance Companies
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act protects you if you already have health insurance and you become ill. This new law forbids your health insurance company from dropping your health insurance coverage, even if your illness is serious, states the Family Doctor website.
The coverage implications for you and your insurance company are that the company is required to continue offering the same benefits to you, regardless of the severity, length or eventual cost of your illness.
If You Get Sick
If you buy your own insurance plan instead of paying for an employer-provided plan and you decide to keep your plan, your insurance company has to keep you as a customer if you get sick.
If you are covered under an employer-provided plan, this same restriction holds for the insurance company ---- it is required to continue providing healthcare coverage, regardless of the cost, length or severity of your illness, reports "The New York Times."
New Federal Requirements
Before the enactment of the new healthcare law, health insurance companies were able to drop your coverage if you became ill. They were allowed to charge you as much as they felt the market would bear, within limitations established by individual state insurance commissions; in addition, they were free to refuse to sell an insurance policy if they chose to do so.
Under the new law, every health insurance company is required to keep you on its rolls. If you are not able to afford an insurance plan, you may qualify for a tax credit to offset the cost. Health insurance companies also are not allowed to increase your monthly premiums unexpectedly if you get sick, states Food Consumer.
Effective Date
Pres. Barack Obama signed the healthcare act into law in March 2010, marking a laundry list of changes to benefit Americans. Despite the fact that healthcare reform is now law, opponents say they are determined to repeal it, or at least, weaken it as much as possible by removing key provisions, states "The New York Times."
Tags: insurance company, health insurance, health insurance, your illness, Affordable Care
