Did we actually get portability of insurance coverage as part of the health care reform bill?

[davsand]

Help me out here, DU. If anybody is gonna know it is the Evil DUers!

In the health care reform, was there any provision for taking your health care plan/coverage with you when you leave an employer? If so, what year does that take effect? I'm have looked and cannot find anything on the subject!




Laura

[Statistical]

1. No.

Personally (just my opinion) I think HC needs to be completely decoupled from place of employment.

If it were up to me:
1) employer doesn't pay for HC.
2) employer provides cost of HC in cash. (i.e instead of $50K in wages + $7K in HC benefits employee simply gets $57K in wages).
3) employee buys HC on exchange (personally I would favor single payer but equal access to an exchange would be a runner up prize IMHO).
4) govt provides subsidies based on income (sliding scale).
5) employee gets to deduct 100% of HC costs on income taxes (employer currently does).

This Health insurance would work just like any other insurance (life, auto, home, etc). Nothing in the HCR provides anything like that. You could change employment every year if you want and never change insurance provider. Sigh. too simple I guess (and single payer would be even more simple).

The only exception would be if your employee DOESN'T offer HC and instead you get a subsidy (potentially depending on income) + access to exchange.

The other exception would be small business which would have access to exchange (partially paid by employer). So if you went from one small business to another small business (or small business -> employer w/ no insurance, or vice versa) you would have portability.

[enlightenment]

2. I believe, but I don't know for certain, that the

'portability' was one of the 'benefits' of the state exchanges.

Better for you to look directly, I think - here's the text of the law (with search options):

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4872/show

[Warpy]

3. Thanks to insurance company wailing and stonewalling

we got absolutely nothing until 2014, at the earliest, and probably not even then if the Republicans get back into power.

[Scuba]

4. Is it a crumb? If not, we didn't get it.

[SoCalDem]

5. "Portability" was always a wiggle-word

If you lose a job, a lot of times you are "offered" COBRA, but you will have to pay not only what your employee share is, but the employer's share as well...and at a time when you have little or no income.

or if you leave a job voluntarily, but liking the health car plan you have/had, is it likely that your "next" boss will just pick up where the former boss left off, or will he/she insist that you take the plan they have the rest of the workforce on, or ask you to pass on it and just pay for your own "pet" coverage.

Portability is pie-in-the sky because we do not have a universal one-size-fits-all health care plan.

If you left a union job with great benefits, that insurance cannot be "portable" because your next boss (non-union, most likely) will not be able to participate inb the same bargaining group plan, or if they are a larger company, they probably have their own insurance that you will be asked to take it or leave it.

Many businesses that do offer medical plans offer the insurance, but the only affordable plans come with a specificity of service areas..ie.. we used to have Pacificare, but a a job change meant that we had to switch to Kaiser..that necessitated new doctors, new clinics and even a new Rx, vision,dental plan. Unless we wanted to pay full price/out-of-pocket, we had to get new doctors, and rely on the sketchy "transfer of records"..The new doctors at Kaiser, of course, wanted all new tests and new procedures to satisfy themselves, instead of relying on transferred records..(my husband's a diabetic)

[davsand]

6. Yes, "pre-existing condition" is an issue.

Kevsand had a heart attack a few years ago and the only way we are gonna get him covered is most likely with a group plan of some sort.

I had hopes that the health care reform had done something to change that...



Laura