New Disclosure Rules For Health Insurers To Take Effect In 2012

By Anastasia Degtyarenko

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Wednesday a new set of rules under the Affordable Care Act that will provide customers with a better understanding of their health care coverage and will make insurance agencies more transparent.

“Insurance can sometimes be the most difficult part for people to understand, so many times people will make decisions on coverage and not understand what it means for them until they get sick,” said Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Don Berwick.

Berwick made clear that, with these regulations put in place, all consumers should have access to two key documents; a 4 page easily understandable Summary of Benefits and Coverage, and a glossary of commonly used terms used by insurers such as “co-pay” and “deductible.”

“Under the proposed regulations, consumers will have a new tool to help them understand some of the jargon that makes it impossible to figure out what is covered and how one insurance plan stacks up compared to another,” read a statement released by Healthcare.gov.

These documents will be standardized for all insurers, allowing customers to compare different plans within different agencies and make a deliberate, knowledgeable decision about their health insurance plan.

This new reform is expected to take effect in March 2012.

For more information about the new regulations Click Here…