The new health law has been a topic of constant debate for the last 6 months. The deadline for registering for a health insurance under the Affordable Care Act has long passed but the debate still goes on. After 4 years of research and rhetoric debate, the law has started to show its effect on the U.S. health care industry. The recent decline in the growth rate of the health care related expenditures can very well be attributed to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Even though the deadline for enrollment has expired, here are some things that you must know.-
How many have actually enrolled?
Whether the democrats like it or not, this figure has become an indicator of the scale of acceptance of the new law. Before January this year, the republicans were more than happy to use this figure as a yard stick to measure the success of the law, to be more precise it was being used as a measure of the failure of the law.
The total number of people who have registered at the marketplace website healthcare.gov has surpassed 7 million. This was the figure that the congressional budget analysts had in their mind during the drafting period of the law but later on it was revised to 6 million. Another 5 million people have been deemed eligible for Medicaid, the health insurance program which is run in cooperation by both state and federal government.
The final tally is due in mid April and only then the real scale of acceptance of the new law would become clear. It must be noted that not everyone who registered on the healthcare.gov will actually pay their first premium. Hence the final figure can be a bit lower than the one being anticipated with over enthusiasm.
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Who has signed up?
Some independent surveys have reported that more number of women have enrolled as compared to men. It might be due to the fact that the new law makes it mandatory for the insurance providers to cover maternity care and screening tests for breast cancer and cervical cancer. It must also be noted that woman are expected to stay healthier than men and have more life expectancy too, hence this can actually go in the favor of insurance companies.
Another report suggests that most of the Americans who have registered at healthcare.gov are older than 35. If this is the case then it can very well mean lesser profits for health insurance companies because older people tend to get sicker. The point to be noted is that health insurance business is state based. Hence states, in which the majority of enrollees are between 18 to 35 years of age, will witness the same premium rates the next year too. As opposed to this, states in which majority of enrollees are old people are going to witness unpleasant rise in premiums and hence it means that if you have not enrolled this year then you will end up paying more when you do so during the next enrollment phase.
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