‘Essential Benefits’ a Complex Question in New Health-Care Law
Generally, these are under the new law health care overhaul, starting in 2014 all new insurance policies for individuals and small businesses will be a minimum package of “essential benefits” fall into 10 general categories include – ranging from hospitalization, prescription drugs, with rehabilitation and rehabilitation care services. But Congress largely left to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to decide how detailed the essential benefits package and what exactly can be set.
Preparing a package that is so bare, and millions of Americans would be deprived of meaningful health coverage when they need it most – undercutting a central objective of health care law. Add in too many expensive benefits and premiums may spike to levels priceless.
On Thursday and Friday a two-day hearing held by the Institute of Medicine, even ardent supporters of health care law pointed to the dangers of this second scenario, if insurance were to be too expensive, many Americans might decide it is a meaningful penalty to be paid in lieu of meeting the requirement of the law that virtually everyone to obtain coverage-a cornerstone of the law undermined. Indeed, the law exempted from the mandate consumers buy insurance if the cost exceeds 8 percent of their income.
