Health Insurance and You!

Last summer, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced its plan to create a standardized, simplified set of health insurance forms that insurers would be required to use. The goal was for all insurance plans to be comparable, side-by-side, so that customers could have a more streamlined shopping experience – devoid of fine print. After reviewing several versions of the forms, which resemble food nutrition labels, HHS released a draft and opened it for comments from the public.

Now, about two weeks later, the Department has finalized the forms’ design, which you can view here. According to Noam M. Levey of the Los Angeles Times, the forms include basic information such as deductibles and co-payments, for both in-network and out-of-network providers. The plans are illustrated through two examples: diabetes management and pregnancy. In addition to the standardized forms, customers will also receive longer booklets with all of the details of a plan.

Information on premiums, which many consumer advocates had hoped the forms would include, is noticeably missing from the finalized versions. Susan Jaffe of Kaiser Health News writes that the advocates hope to reinstate price information in 2014, when insurers will no longer be allowed to change premium costs based on preexisting conditions.

Originally, insurance companies were supposed to start using the new forms in March of this year. But because of delays in coming up with a final design, the deadline was pushed back to this September. That gives insurers about six months to start complying with the rules, which they say will still be quite a rush, given the large number of plans offered by each company; according to an article by Sam Baker of the Hill, insurers had hoped to have about 18 months.