How much will health insurance cost in 2014?
A common question we hear at our Customer Care Center is, "How much will health insurance cost in 2014? Will the new plans cost more?" The answer is not easy to give. For some people costs may go up, at least in the short term. For others costs may go down or stay the same. What is critical to understand is that the Affordable Care Act or Healthcare Reform sets a new minimum benefits standard for every major medical health insurance policy in the country. Beginning in January 2014 any major medical plan sold must provide coverage for a minimum of 10 essential health benefits. Including- 1. Ambulatory patient services 2. Emergency services 3. Hospitalization 4. Maternity and newborn care 5. Mental health and substance abuse 6. Prescription drugs 7. Rehabilitative and habilitative services 8. Laboratory services 9. Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management and 10. Pediatric care. And the law requires that all these benefits must be covered at a minimum of 60% of their actuarial value. You're probably wondering what is actuarial value? The easiest way to explain it is to say that it is a percentage of total average costs for covered benefits that a plan will cover. So a plan with 70% actuarial value will typically cover 70% of the cost and the customer would typically be responsible for 30% of the cost.
