Health Care Reform Enters Day 90

Today marked the “90 day anniversary” for the health care reform law known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  The administration and the department of Health and Human Services marked the celebration(?) by issuing a Patients’ Bill of Rights.  For the most part, this is just a restatement of some of the provisions of the law that are taking place this year.  There was one paragraph that did catch my eye.

 

Getting the Most from Your Premium Dollars. Beginning in January, the Affordable Care Act requires individual and small group insurers to spend at least 80% and large group insurers to spend at least 85% of your premium dollars on direct medical care and efforts to improve the quality of care you receive – and rebate you the difference if they fall short. This will limit spending on overhead and salaries and bonuses paid to insurance company executives and provide new transparency into how your dollars are spent. Insurers will be required to publicly disclose their rates on a new national consumer website – HealthCare.gov.

The piece I found interesting was that the insurers will have to disclose their loss ratio numbers on a national website for the whole world to see.  Now, as of this writing, HealthCare.gov is not currently up and running.   I will be keeping an eye on it and let you know when its up and what type of information will be found there.