Part of the health care reform laws include the creation of “coverage fact labels” that will describe what each health insurance policy will cover. These labels are being worked on right now by a group of state insurance regulators, industry representatives, and consumer advocates. The labels are supposed to make it much easier for consumers to compare one health insurance policy against another.
When I go grocery shopping, I read absolutely everything on the ingredient label of every food I buy. I do this for health reasons. There are a lot of foods that I am allergic to, and I want to make certain that I avoid them. The ingredient labels on food packages make it very simple for me to compare one jar of pasta sauce to another jar of pasta sauce.
Shopping around for health insurance, however, is not nearly as easy as comparing pasta sauce. Most people find it very difficult to discover exactly what their health insurance policy will cover. In general, people end up doing the opposite. They learn precisely what their health insurance policy will not cover, after they have already received the treatment, prescription, or doctor visit, and have sent a claim to their insurance company. Obviously, this isn’t the ideal way to find things out.
If a person cannot find out what is covered on their health insurance policy, then it isn’t possible to compare it to the health insurance policies that come from other insurance companies. This is about to change. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners are required to create a draft of something new called “coverage facts labels”. Next, a group that was made up of state insurance regulators, representatives of the insurance industry, and consumer advocates started working on the new labels.
This week, the combined group started asking the public for comments about the draft form of the labels. Once all this gets finalized, the labels will be sent back to federal officials, who will review them, and consider incorporating the labels into rules that insurance companies will have to follow.
The labels are supposed to be available to consumers starting in 2012. Each label will be around two pages long, and will appear after four or more pages of detailed information about what a particular health insurance plan covers. A consumer will not be able to get an exact price from the label, but it will give a person a pretty good guess about what they will have to pay out of pocket for if they buy a certain health insurance policy.
At first, these labels will focus on just three medical conditions: maternity care, treatment for diabetes, and breast cancer. The labels will include a benefit summary that gives very specific details about what will, and what will not, be covered by a health insurance plan, in regards to necessary care for one of those three medical conditions.
Image by Ben Ostrowsky on Flickr