A set of rules that take effect Jan. 1, 2014, will make shopping for health insurance a completely different experience for those who buy it on their own—or are uninsured today. These are the biggies:
Guaranteed issue. This is the most popular part of health reform: Health plans must sell coverage to everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and can’t charge more based on health or gender.
Exchanges. By this time next year, every state must have an insurance exchange— an organized marketplace where individuals and small-business owners can view, compare, and purchase qualified private health plans. It’s expected that most consumers will shop on their state’s exchange online, but they can also shop by phone or through brokers.
States have the option of setting up exchanges themselves or allowing the federal government to do the job. It’s expected that the federal government will operate exchanges in as many as half the states. (To see what an exchange looks like, visit the Health Connector run by Massachusetts, which has had a mandate since 2007.) About 20 states are expected to be ready to operate their own exchanges by late 2013. In other states, the federal government will step in to do the job.
Individual mandate. Everyone will be required to have health insurance or pay a penalty. Almost any sort of legitimate coverage will satisfy the mandate: private insurance obtained on your own or through a job, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, Veterans Affairs, or Tricare.
Penalty. If you don’t have health insurance, you’ll have to pay a tax penalty, starting at $95 per individual, $285 per family, or 1 percent of income, whichever is greater, for 2014. (That rises to $695 per individual, $2,085 per family, or 2.5 percent of income in 2016.)
Because the vast majority of people will already have qualifying health insurance, few will confront the choice of buying a plan or paying a penalty. Moreover, you won’t have to pay it if you make too little money to file a federal tax return or would have to spend more than 8 percent of your household income on the cheapest qualifying plan, even including subsidies. Americans living abroad, and those in prisons, are exmpt from the mandate and associated fines.
Individual subsidies. Afraid you won’t be able to afford insurance? If you buy on an exchange as an individual, you may qualify for a subsidy in the form of an advance tax credit if your household income is between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level. (The tax system already subsidizes people who have coverage through a job by excluding the cost of their health plan from income taxes.)
For instance, a family of four with an income of 200 percent of poverty, or about $46,000 in 2012, will pay no more than $235 a month for health insurance. People with household incomes of less than 250 percent of poverty will also get subsidies to reduce their out-of-pocket costs, such as deductibles and coinsurance. You’ll learn whether you qualify for a subsidy when you shop on the exchange.
Medicaid expansion. The health care law was intended to expand the government-run health program for low-income Americans to cover up to 16 million more people with household incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line ($14,856 for an individual and $30,657 for a family of four). That includes many at or below the poverty line who aren’t currently eligible. Read more about how to navigate Medicaid.
