Remember how the new rules for “grandfathered” health plans were issued by the Obama Administration last week? Well, that was just a preview of the main event, the undercard match before the big championship fight.
Tuesday, the big battle really began when President Obama convened a meeting of insurance company executives and state insurance commissioners in Washington, warning the health care leaders not to use the new federal health care bill to simply raise rates and boost their profits.
“There are genuine cost drivers that are not caused by insurance companies,” the president told the group according to a story in The New York Times. “But what is also true is that we’ve got to make sure that this new law is not being used as an excuse to simply drive up costs.”
Yes, the politics behind the health care reform battle will probably go on for quite some time, but there are also bits and pieces of tangible health care information mixed in with the rhetoric. And, these are the things every HR professional and business leader are going to need to know to help navigate through the various issues surrounding health care reform that almost seem to change daily.
One piece of important information that came out Tuesday is this: a summary of the “The Affordable Care Act’s New Patient’s Bill of Rights,” the Obama administration’s summary of new regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services.
This is important information that everyone who manages an organization’s benefits needs to know, and Kaiser Health News does a good job of breaking out the government’s “fact sheet” on the Patient’s Bill of Rights that detail exactly what these new rules are. It’s is something you will probably want to save.
In addition, the federal government announced that a new website would be launched July 1 that “for the first time, will give consumers a list of all private and government health care plans for individuals and small businesses in their areas,” according to another Kaiser Health News story published in USA Today .
The website — www.healthcare.gov – will initially “provide just basic facts, such as the names of companies, health plans and Web links… (But) beginning in October, it will list detailed cost and benefits information. Consumer groups and insurers already are clashing over exactly what information should be displayed.”
If you’re an HR professional, you are undoubtedly struggling to get good information on what you will need to do in your own organization to deal with health care reform. We will try to provide you with the most up-to-date information here at TLNT.com – from how to navigate the “immediate” issues from health care reform, to the latest thinking on how much your company’s health care costs may increase as a result of these reforms .
Is this all terribly confusing and hard to get your hands around? You bet. That’s why you need as much health care reform information as you can get from as many different sources as possible. We’ll do our best to keep abreast of it all for you here at TLNT.
