Health Law’s Impact Has Only Begun
Insurers Seek Healthy Enrollees, Doctors Educate New Patients, Employers Wrestle With Added Costs
On Jan. 1, the key provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect. Americans gained access to new health plans subsidized by federal dollars. Insurers no longer can turn away people with existing conditions. Millions are now eligible for new Medicaid benefits.
But the federal law also upended existing health-insurance arrangements for millions of people. Companies worry about the expense of providing new policies, some hospitals aren’t seeing the influx of new patients they expected to balance new costs and entrepreneurs say they may hire more part-time workers to avoid offering more coverage.
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How Has the Health Law Affected You?
The law’s true impact will play out over years. It will depend in part on whether backers overcome serious early setbacks, including crippling glitches in the new online insurance marketplaces and many states’ rejection of the Medicaid expansion. But another obstacle the law faces is pushback from some consumers and industry over the higher costs, complex rules and mandatory requirements it imposes. ( Watch doctors, business owners and patients share their stories about the health law, and tell us your own. )
So far, 3.3 million have signed up for plans through the new government marketplaces, federal officials said Feb. 12. About 6.3 million were determined eligible for Medicaid through the exchanges over the final three months of 2013, including people who might have been able to enroll without the law.
The law’s potential for change can be seen in the lives of people like Jaime Hood, a 37-year-old in Belton, Mo. She suffers from hemophilia and had been rejected for coverage until this year. Now, she will have access to drugs and other treatments she sometimes skipped.
