President Barack Obama's announcement that people in the individual health insurance market will be permitted to keep their current policies for one more year is not expected to have much impact in Georgia.
That’s because most Georgians in that market already had that option.
Most of the nearly 400,000 Georgians with individual health insurance policies – the plans that are affected by this move – have received notices that their plans do not meet the standards set by the Affordable Care Act. But those notices typically offered the policyholder the choice of renewing their plans, with no changes in coverage, for one year. Many have done so.
The Affordable Care Act mandates that insurance cover 10 “essential health benefits,” ranging from hospital and emergency room care to maternity and newborn care to psychiatric and addiction treatment. Policies on the individual market often do not offer all 10 of those benefits, and insurers have informed their customers that new policies covering all the benefits will be more expensive – often far more expensive – than the policies they hold now.
But most insurers in the state gave customers the option of “early renewal” for 2014, permitting them to hold the less expensive policies for one more year if they sign up soon. (That doesn’t mean customers will pay the same price as in 2013; some insurers are raising prices slightly even for these lesser plans.)
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