Today Is The First Anniversary of the Patient’s Bill of Rights in the Affordable Care Act

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Dear Friend,

Today we celebrate the first anniversary of the Patient’s Bill of Rights. These rights—signed into law as part of the Affordable Care Act—have already had an important impact on all Americans who have private health insurance.

Thanks to the Patient’s Bill of Rights you can no longer be arbitrarily dropped from coverage by your insurance company simply because you get sick.  Your insurance company can no longer place a lifetime cap on your coverage.  And annual caps are phasing out.  Furthermore, if you are under age 65 and in a new plan, you are now receiving free key preventive services.

The Patient’s Bill of Rights has also meant one million young adults now have health insurance because insurers are now required to allow persons up to age 26 to obtain coverage under their parents’ plan. Moreover, up to 17 million children with pre-existing conditions are now insurable because insurance companies are barred from rejecting them.

In addition to the Patient’s Bill of Rights, the Affordable Care Act also provided new Medicare benefits for America’s seniors, which became effective on January 1, 2011.  To date, these provisions have greatly benefited California seniors. Already, nearly 90,000 California seniors have received a 50 percent discount on brand-name drugs when they fell into the Medicare Part D ‘donut hole’ coverage gap, saving our seniors over $44 million. In addition, seniors are now receiving free annual physicals and key preventive health services, such as cancer screenings and vaccines. Nearly 1.5 million California seniors have already taken advantage of these services, and I encourage you to make sure the seniors in your life get their preventive check-ups, too.

Beyond these individual benefits, this month marked the beginning of new consumer protections against unreasonable insurance premium hikes. Starting this month, insurers that propose to increase their rates by 10 percent or more must submit their request to state or federal reviewers who will determine if those hikes are reasonable. This means consumers will no longer have to take the word of their insurance company; they will have an independent expert on their side. This rate review program, created by the Affordable Care Act, will bring greater transparency, accountability, and, in many cases, lower costs for families and small business owners who struggle to afford coverage. While there is still more we need to do to keep insurance rates down, this is an important first step.

In these tough economic times, the costs of health care can break family budgets. But these Affordable Care Act provisions—and others that are still being implemented—will help ease that burden. Please keep in touch by visiting me on Facebook and my channel on YouTube.