ggingues;61210
PS I believe the pre-existing condition thing is not going to go into effect until 2014?[/QUOTE said:
For children, it is supposed to go into effect immediately. For adults, there is going to be a possibility of joining a state run high-risk pool until 2014, and at that point the rest of the companies will have to get rid of the pre-existing clasue; however, this has actually been in place in most states already - it's just that most people are not aware of it and it is not usually very affordable. The way that it works, though, is that the state in essence becomes your grp (like a workplace would be), but since it is a grp of people with pre-exisiting conditions and others who are unable to get insurance any other way, it can still be failry expensive - just less than trying to get an individual high risk policy.
There is also something in the policy that I am not remembering clearly rt now, and I will say also that I did not research this part as thoroughly, bc it does not affect me personally rt now. I do think it is very important, so I did find out about it, but it is possible that I am getting it wrong or that it has changed since I looked into it.......but from my understanding, when the pre-exist part of the bill was first brought up, there was somethign to do with an application period or somethign like that, that basically makes it so that people still have to wait 6 months before they can take advantage of not being excluded for pre-existing condition. (That is for the new bill; not the state grps).
So, if I am understanding it rt, in a way not a lot has changed. In most employee grp insurance policies, if you had a pre-existing condition, and you went for 6 months without it being covered, they looked at it like it was no longer a pre-exisitng condition. Then you were elligible for coverage. So, in otehr words, you had to basically pretend that your condition was in remition or that it has been cured for 6 months. After that six months, it was assumed that a new occurance of the condition was just that; a new occurrance, and no longer consdiered pre-exisitng. Then it was covered. Now, you don't have to act like it has been cured, but you still have to wait 6 months for it to be coeverd.
The one big difference in this bill that is very good, is that for some poeple any occurrance of certain illnesses any time during their lives automatically made many insuracne companies refuse to cover them at any time, and sometimes allowed thier existing companies to drop them. This is not actually the same as a pre-existing thing, though. Even if you had no symptoms of the illness or were even consdiered to have been cured, simply having had one of these illnesses at any time, made you uninsurable. Companies will no longer be able to do that with the new bill.