Health Insurance Articles
Signs That The Affordable Care Act Will Affect Health Insurance Rates
2011-11-18
Health insurance rates may go up or down depending on what is going on with the Affordable Care Act. Each year since the bill was signed into effect in 2009, different components enter the healthcare and insurance industry. The new changes will have an effect on what we pay for our monthly premiums.
There are different components of the Affordable Care Act that could either reduce or raise the health insurance rates that everyone is used to paying. It's important to understand what each of the 2012 aspects of the Act will do for the health insurance and healthcare industry. One of the first changes of 2012 under the Act is to encourage integrated health systems. Doctors and care facilities are being encouraged to join forces to provide different organizations. This will help doctors better diagnose and discuss different health issues. The government is offering financial incentives to those who partake in this.
As a result of these health systems, we could see health insurance rates go down once this takes place. This would be several years down the road once the doctors begin forming these organizations and enough patients are helped through the health systems. Persistent health disparities are part of what we face as a nation. The Secretary of Health and Human Services will begin collecting a lot of this data to help understand where these are coming from so that healthcare can be tailored to accommodate and correct these disparities. Again, this could lower the health insurance rates once the disparities are under control, which can take several years.
Reducing paperwork and administrative costs are other things covered within the Affordable Care Act. This will probably increase the rates initially because the software changes that every hospital and doctor's office must undergo are expensive. This is followed by training on all of the systems. Once it is all implemented, we may start to see a reduction in health insurance rates because the administrative costs will eventually be lowered.
Payment and quality outcomes will also be initiated in 2012, which is another sign that the Affordable Care Act will affect our insurance rates. As long as more doctors focus on the quality, they will be able to be compensated. The question is how much more money will they spend in order to get that quality? This is not clearly defined and could end up having the opposite effect on healthcare. The Affordable Care Act is currently under review by a lot of politicians. Many of the presidential candidates would like to do away with it all together. If that is the case, the entire future of our health insurance rates is left in a questionable state.
