The Affordable Care Act will affect you in many ways, some positive and some negative but overall it should make healthcare more accessible, and hopefully affordable. Time will tell but for me, optimism prevails. This will be an ongoing aspect of my blog posts and I hope you will find the information both useful and educational. I will try to respond to your comments and questions.

My understanding is that as of January 1^st 2014 – every American is required to have health insurance. Obviously that is not the case, but it sure sounds like a great idea. As far as costs go, at this time your costs could be higher or lower depending on both your present policy, your new ACA policy coverage and numerous other factors including location, income, gender, etc. It is likely that with time, costs will decrease due to shear volume and the fact that the healthiest individuals, who generally went without insurance, will now join the pool of insured and help to lower the average costs.

Note to those who are young and healthy and generally feel indestructible – you are NOT! Health insurance is really for catastrophic care and like life insurance, hopefully never needed. But if one of the dozens of serious illnesses that affect people between the ages of 18 and 30, hits you and you are uninsured… think about the potential debt that you and your family face.

One indisputable positive aspect to the Affordable Care Act is that ALL insurance companies are forbidden to exclude, reject or increase costs to those people who have pre-existing conditions. According to the US Government Accountability Office this could assist from 20 to over 66% of the population depending on your insurance company’s definition of chronic illness.

More to come later…

Here’s to health, peace, and prosperity!

Dr. Chaz