In general those with available employer provided insurance can't get coverage on the Health Insurance marketplace. Those with employer coverage got expanded features and will see reduced costs. Your employer may move your coverage to the Small Business Health Options Program(SHOP) which will allow you to shop various policies and companies. There are a lot of financial incentives for a small company to do this under the act. Small companies will not be forced to cancel coverage because a single employee has serious condition as they have had to in the past. Spouses and children can't be excluded from company(or individual) plans or denied coverage.
The reform act addresses the biggest problems in our system which are people that are uninsured because no coverage is available or no affordable coverage is available. These problems exist mostly for people that are self employed or work for companies that don't provide coverage. As of Jan. 2014, you can't be turned down for insurance because of a preexisting condition(like UC) and a spouse or child can't be denied coverage or have a excluded condition. You can't be charged more than a healthy person either.
If you have individual coverage or are uninsured, you can shop on the marketplace starting OCT 1 for coverage starting JAN 1. There are instant(?) tax credits that reduce premiums to an affordable level. The polices are identical with regard to coverage under the various "metal" levels WITH ONE MAJOR EXCEPTION. The exception is the PPO network. You need to request the network membership list from each company and make sure that hospitals, doctors, and networks you may want to use are on them. You have OCT 1 -December31 to research and choose.
If you have employer provided insurance(especially with a small company ie less than 50 workers), you need to research the options and talk to your employer. The current situation in small business is HORRIBLE and I think most small business employers and employees will end up loving this program.
The benefits of this reform to people with UC are huge. No more being forced to go without insurance or continue with a overpriced policy because no company will give you new coverage. Your child or spouse with UC can't be excluded from your policy. No more "phony" groups that trap the sick then price them out of coverage. I think you will see major reductions in the costs of the rip-off drugs we have to take if all of us get on insurance. If insurance companies have to take us all, they are not going to tolerate the current pricing/cost shifting policies of drug companies. They will not tolerate rebranding(asacol to asacol hd to ...) and the rest of the nonsense they pull.
My personal situation is that I had fairly good individual coverage with supposedly the best company in the state when I was diagnosed. Like all companies they set up bogus "groups". Each year the polices are changed slightly and new groups is created at each benefit level. The older policy groups get larger and larger price increases and this drives the healthy people to new policies. Those will UC or other expensive conditions are denied new policies and slowly driven off the old policy groups that contain nothing but the sick. A group of all sickies of course get really expensive. My current policy has twice the premium of a much better plan with a lower deductible. They can't do this anymore.
What is really amazing is that prior to my diagnosis I had insurance for almost 30 years and made a single claim for $25. After getting UC, I make thousands of dollars a year in claims but NEVER have my claims exceeded the single years premium I paid.
