The essential benefits report, created by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), has been released. The Affordable Care Act requires the package to reflect benefits covered by a typical employer plan and include 10 categories. According to the report, HHS officials will compare potential services and products against a set of critera, created by the IOM, including medial effectiveness, safety and relative value compared with alternative options, and evaluate whether the package as a whole protects the most vulnerable individuals, promotes services that have proved effective and addresses the medical concerns of greatest important to the public. In keeping with their assigned task, the IOM did not address and specific types of benefits in their recommendations. It instead tells the Secretary of HHS how to define the minimum benefits. Click here to view additional recourses by the IOM including the IOM’s press release, criteria, report brief and report release presentation.

The first “unintended consequence” of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) addressed in Part 1 of the blog described how routine physical exams were not specifically listed as a preventive service under health reform so insurance companies do not have to cover this service. The second “unintended consequence” of health reform addressed in Part 2 of the blog revealed how most insurance companies are not offering individual insurance policies to children under 19 since they are prohibited from applying pre-existing conditions exclusions. The third and final “unintended consequence” of health reform that I will discuss relates to dependent children under the age of 26 staying on their parents’ plans.

Wikipedia states that the law of unintended consequences is a warning that an intervention in a complex system always creates unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes. Unfortunately, health reform has “unintended consequences” written all over it. Three specific examples include: preventive care, no pre-existing conditions for children under 19, and dependent children under the age of 26 staying on parents’ plans. I’ll focus on the first topic today: preventive care.

The DOL, HHS, and IRS jointly issued another set of FAQs (Part V) regarding implementation of the market reform provision Affordable Care Act, with topics including auto-enrollment in group health plans, summary of benefit disclosure requirements to group health plan participants, grandfathered plans, dependents to age 26 requirements, preexisting condition requirements for children in individual health policies, and value-based insurance design in connection with preventive care benefits.

The DOL, HHS, and IRS jointly issued another set of FAQs (Part IV) regarding implementation of the market reform provisions of the Affordable Care Act. For simplicity, only the questions are included below. You may view the government’s response here or access FAQs Part I, Part II and Part III.

BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina (BCBS) and BlueChoice HealthPlan (BCHP) announce dependent children may remain on their parents’ policy in advance of the new federal law.