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    Obamacare: What's in It for Me?: What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act
    Obamacare: What's in It for Me?: What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act
    Obamacare: What's in It for Me?: What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act
    Ebook111 pages1 hour

    Obamacare: What's in It for Me?: What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act

    By Wendell Potter

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    About this ebook

    On January 1, 2014, the most important consumer protections in ObamaCare (the Affordable Care Act) go into effect. With both supporters and opponents of the law debating its merits and its controversial rollout, there is a need for “news-you-can-use” types of resources from credible third parties.

    Enter Wendell Potter, author of Deadly Spin and former health insurance executive. Obamacare: What's in It for Me? is the authoritative source for Americans needing to know how the law will affect them and their families: How will it affect the millions of Americans who already have coverage through their employers? People who work for small companies that don't offer coverage? The unemployed? People who are in their 20s, 30s and 40s, some of whom may find that coverage costs them more than before? Older Americans not yet eligible for Medicare, many of whom will be able to get much more affordable coverage? Medicare beneficiaries? Low-to moderate income individuals and families? People with pre-existing conditions? Children?

    As a former insurance industry insider and now a recognized expert on ObamaCare, Wendell Potter is perfectly positioned to explain to a wide audience, hungry for the real story (without the spin), of just what this health care overhaul means for all of us.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateDec 6, 2013
    ISBN9781620407752
    Obamacare: What's in It for Me?: What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act
    Author

    Wendell Potter

    Wendell Potter is a Senior Fellow on Health Care for the Center for Media and Democracy. In 2009, he retired after a twenty-year career as a PR executive for health insurers to speak out on both the need for health care reform and the increasingly unchecked influence of corporate PR. He is a native of Tennessee.

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      Book preview

      Obamacare - Wendell Potter

      OBAMACARE: WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

      What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act

      Wendell Potter

      Bloomsbury Press

      New York London New Delhi Sydney

      Contents

      Preface

      Introduction: The Affordable Care Act—An Overview

      1  Why We Needed Reform in the First Place

      2  Essential Health Benefits: An End to Junk Insurance

      3  It Affects Everyone I Know—And Everyone I Don’t Know, Too

      4  What’s in it for Me and My Fellow 77 Million Baby Boomers?

      5  What’s in it for Lou and Other Americans Working for Big Companies?

      6  What’s in it for Emily and Other Young People Without Insurance?

      7  What’s in it for Alex and others Offered Junk Insurance?

      8  What’s in it for Granny and Other Medicare Seniors?

      9  What’s in it for Bobbie Ann and Hank and Millions of Other Farmers and Small-Town Folks?

      10  What’s in it for Donna—And Most of the Rest of Us?

      11  What’s in it for Mary Ellen and Other Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners?

      12  Myths, Distortions, and Outright Lies

      Conclusion: Where We Need to Go from Here

      Appendices

      1  Glossary

      2  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2013 Federal Poverty Level Guidelines

      3  States Planning to Expand Medicaid in 2014

      4  Types of Health Insurance Marketplaces by State

      5  Medicare Preventive Services

      6  Free Preventive Services for People Under 65 (Partial List)

      7  Resources

      A Note on the Author

      Preface

      Ready or not—and like it or not—the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and (colloquially) as Obamacare, is here. If it hasn’t already made a difference in your life, it soon will. And, believe it or not, even if you’re a small-government-loving member of the Tea Party or a single-payer Medicare-for-All liberal, you’ll eventually be glad we have it.

      Some of the most important provisions of the law—the ones that will force insurance companies to be more consumer-friendly—take effect on January 1, 2014, and all of us will benefit in one way or another. Among other things:

      Insurers will no longer be able to blackball any of us—and declare us uninsurable—because we’ve been sick in the past or were born with what industry executives call pre-existing conditions.

      They won’t be able to charge women more than men or older folks nearly as much as they’ve been able to get away with in the past.

      They won’t be able to sell policies that provide little more than a fig leaf of coverage.

      They’ll no longer be able to baffle us with gobbledygook or hide important details about benefits and costs in fine print.

      And they’ll have to compete for our business in a way that will make shopping for coverage much easier than ever before. Many of us will be able to buy policies that are much more affordable than in the past not only because of increased competition but also because of newly available tax credits and subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans pay their premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

      While these benefits are new, many individuals and families have been benefiting from the law for quite some time. Soon after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, insurance companies could not deny coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions or kick them off their parents’ policies until they turned 26. Those changes alone reduced the ranks of the uninsured by more than 3 million. And beginning in 2011, insurance companies were required to spend at least 80 percent of what we pay in premiums on our health care instead of overhead and profits. If they don’t, they have to send rebate checks to their policyholders. Americans have already saved billions of dollars from that provision alone.

      As of October 1, 2013, millions of Americans who never dreamed they would be able to afford insurance have finally been able to do so through the new health insurance marketplaces. Every state—even the states that do not plan to expand their Medicaid programs in 2014—and the District of Columbia now have health insurance marketplaces.

      Those of us who’ve had health insurance all along should see the cost of our coverage moderate and the quality of our health care improve as insurers, large employers, small businesses, and health care providers all adjust to the new rules established by the Affordable Care Act.

      To borrow a metaphor from one of President Obama’s favorite pastimes, it’s as if the pickup basketball game that had been American health insurance suddenly acquired a referee, a scorekeeper, and out-of-bounds lines.

      How will the ACA affect you and your family and how can you make the most of it? That’s what this book is all about. I’ll describe the major provisions of the law and share some stories about how it is benefiting a great many people. People like my wife and me (baby boomers a few years away from Medicare), our 20- and 30-something kids, my elderly mom, and other folks we know and love. Folks like Tea Party cousin Hank in my home state of Tennessee and good friend Mary Ellen here in Philly, who started her own business after losing her corporate job a few years ago. I’m confident that you’ll find yourself and people you know and love throughout this little book. And for those of you who want still more detail, the final section of the book offers a series of appendices, including a glossary and a list of resources that provide even more information.

      Late in this book, you’ll find a conclusion discussing where we need to go from here. I’ve often called the Affordable Care Act the end of the beginning of reform. Indeed, it’s a step forward, but we need to do more to make sure every American has access to care in the most appropriate setting at the most appropriate time. And there is much more we need to do to ensure that the United States of America, one of the

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