Just 2 percent of health plans available to consumers in the private insurance market offer all the coverage that will become mandatory next year under the health care overhaul, a new analysis has found.
That means that only about one in 50 plans are now in compliance with the main requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to HealthPocket Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif., technology firm that “compares and ranks” health plans.
And consumers and the federal government might end up paying the cost of those new requirements in higher premiums. The analysis found that basic benefits, including doctor visits, emergency room care, hospitalizations and lab tests, were standard offerings for nearly all the 11,000 plans in the study.
But only one in four offered pediatric care and only 8 percent covered dental checkups for children. About one-third covered maternity and newborn care and just over half covered services to deal with substance abuse.
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