Learn About The Health Care Reform Timeline Under Obama Care

The Obama health care reform officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was launched on March 23, 2010. Since its inception, the law focused to improve the health or medical care scenario of the land. The ACA law intends to provide affordable as well as augmented medical treatment to the citizens of the land. And at the same time, the law tried to reduce the gradually increasing rise of medical treatments in the United States of America.  The Affordable Care law also tried to bring more citizens of the land under the purview of the health care insurance and thereby tried to decrease the number of uninsured population of the land.

And the medical care bill to enhance the medical system of the land implemented several reforms to the health care law of the country. And these reforms were done on a specific date or year by maintaining a specific timeline. These reforms implemented on specific timeline affected employers as well as individuals. Let us now take a brief tour on when and how reforms were done to the healthcare law.

The reforms starting from 2010-2012.

The reforms or changes that were made to the law in the year 2010 are-

1. i) Under the ACA law, health insurance coverage for young adults was extended. Group health care insurance policies providing services on individual and group medical insurance coverage were made to extend coverage benefits for young adults up to the age of 26 years. This provision was made applicable for both grandfathered as well as non-grandfathered health insurance plans.
2. ii) The Affordable Care Act expanded the Medicare policy. As a result of which the senior citizens were allowed to get or receive discounts or rebates on prescribed drugs.

iii) Under the health care rule in this year coverage of preventive care services were expanded for policyholders. The law mentioned that health insurance issuers must cover or provide preventive care services to the people without any kind of additional cost. However, grandfathered plans remain exempted from this requirement.

1. iv) Health Insurance service providers were prohibited from dropping coverage when a person is sick.

The reform timeline from 2013-2014.

1. i) The law made health insurance exchanges available for the middle as well as a low-income holding Americans.
2. ii) In the year 2013, the law simplified its administrative part by enforcing uniform norms for the electronic exchange of health information so that paperwork could be reduced.

iii) The law reformed its provisions and made it mandatory that no annual dollar limitation could be set on health insurance plans.

1. iv) The law made it mandatory to include at least some essential benefits from the stated “ten essential benefits” in the plan.

The reform timeline from 2015-2016.

1. i) Employer mandate became applicable. It stated that an organization with fifty or more full time or equivalent employees must provide health insurance to employees.
2. ii) The law clearly stated that to enhance the medical facilities a doctor’s income will be based on the quality of service provided.

The reform timeline from 2017-18.

1. i)  Pre-existing conditions including high-risk patients were no more considered.
2. ii) Every health care plan was required to provide preventive care coverage.

It can be witnessed that since the inception of the law in the year 2010 till date the law has gone through lot of changes and it gave a shape to the medical scenario of the country.