Taking Your Questions on Health Reform

Thank you for taking part in our first weekly web chat on the new health insurance reform law with Secretary Sebelius and Karen Mills, the Administrator of Small Business Administration. If you missed it on Wednesday, you can watch it again any time on demand.  This was the first in a series of online discussions we are hosting each week to talk about how the new health reform law will help you get higher quality care at a lower cost.

As we prepared for the web chat, we asked you to submit questions to help us guide our conversation, and we got an amazing response. More than 600 of you emailed in your questions. Thank you. In the months ahead, we will continue answering your questions, whether it’s live online or right here at www.healthreform.gov.

While we covered a variety of topics during the chat, one area we focused most on was how small businesses will benefit under the new law.

Small businesses spend, on average, 18 percent more for the same coverage than large businesses. But thanks to the new law, many new affordability provisions will be in place to help small business owners cover their employees. Here are six ways in which reform will help small businesses.

Here are a few more examples of the great questions that you asked and some of the topics that we covered:

Maria from California asked: “My family and I already have health insurance through my employer.  How will this Health Reform Bill affect me?”

Secretary Sebelius: The coverage will stay in place through your employer, and all the plans are going to have preventive care with no co-pays. So as the plan gets renewed, the insurance companies will redesign the plan to make sure that preventive coverage will be provided. Hopefully you’ll see less taken out of your pocket over time because comprehensive health reform will help lower costs for everybody [and] take some of the administrative overhead out of insurance costs. It should be a benefit and stabilize the plan you have.

Larry asked: “I am a senior who is already in the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage known as the donut hole.  Will the rebate of $250 be sent to me automatically or must I apply for it and how?”

Secretary Sebelius: We’re developing the specific rules right now, but this year, the $250 rebate will be sent the quarter that you hit that gap in coverage. So if I understand it correctly, if you’re already there, and we’re only in March, by June you will get a $250 check…For those who may hit later in the year, there will be additional checks going out in September that will take care of that, and over time, the “donut hole” will be completely closed so you won’t be facing that kind of gap any longer. Next year, about a 50% decrease in the brand name drugs in the donut hole takes effect.