Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
What Should A Health Plan Cover?
The Wall Street Journal: Paring ACA Raises Questions On What A Health Plan Should Cover
As Republicans consider paring back the Affordable Care Act’s federal mandates, they face a difficult question: what does health insurance need to cover? The 2010 health law created a new set of federal requirements for plans sold to individuals and small businesses, including a list of 10 benefits, among them prescription drugs, mental-health services and laboratory tests. It also mandated that plans cover preventive services such as vaccinations at no cost to enrollees. (Wilde Mathews, 2/2)
The Wall Street Journal: 5 Things Required To Be Part Of ACA Health Plans
The Affordable Care Act created new federal requirements for health plans. Some critics of the law want to allow more flexibility in plan design, which they say could help bring down premiums and potentially draw in more healthy enrollees. Here are some of the law’s insurance mandates, and potential trade-offs, if those are relaxed or eliminated. (Wilde Mathews, 2/2)
Previous KHN coverage: 6 Lesser-Known Obamacare Provisions That Could Evaporate
The Associated Press: Risk To Women's Health Benefits Seen In Health Law Repeal
From a return to higher premiums for women to gaps in coverage for birth control and breast pumps, the Republican push to repeal the Obama-era health care law already is raising concerns that women could be hit hard. The 2010 law ended a common industry practice of charging women more than men for policies purchased directly from an insurer. It made maternity and newborn care a required benefit for individual market health plans. And it set a list of preventive services to be provided at no extra cost to women, including birth control and breast pumps used by nursing mothers. (2/1)
The Associated Press: Entrepreneurs: Health Law Changes May Mean Finding New Jobs
Stay in business for yourself or go back to working for someone else? That's the choice some small business owners and freelancers are worried they may have to make, depending on what changes Congress makes in the health care law. With Republicans working on legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, people who traded a full-time job for entrepreneurship are concerned that new insurance policies may be too expensive or not available at all — and possibly force them to find new jobs that offer cheaper and more comprehensive group plans. (Rosenberg, 2/1)
