Business Insurance December 13, 2010

DURING A RECENT HEARING, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., asked whether mini-med plans are doing consumers more harm than good.

That’s a fair question. The plans, which typically are offered to low-wage, part-time or temporary employees, have little resemblance to mainstream employer-provided health care plans.

Typical group plans have high or no annual dollar limits on covered services. Compare that with a mini-med plan that has an annual limit of only several thousand dollars, which Sen. Rockefeller said is so low that it wouldn’t fully cover the medical costs of having a baby.

But we don’t think it is fair to say the plans do more harm than good. The plans ensure that enrollees have coverage—in some cases with little, if any, cost-sharing—of routine medical care, such as office visits. That may encourage employees to seek preventive care, such as annual physicals, and increase the likelihood that medical issues are detected before they develop into more expensive-to-treat conditions.

By 2014 under the health care reform law, health care plans no longer will be able to impose annual limits on essential benefits, a threshold test that mini-med plans, as currently designed, won’t be able to pass.

But that won’t matter because many mini-med plan enrollees will be able to obtain comprehensive, federally subsidized coverage starting in 2014 through new state health insurance exchanges that the reform law authorizes.

Until then, the plans will have served a vital role in providing at least some coverage of employees’ health care needs.

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This entry was posted by Adam V. Russo on Wednesday, December 15th, 2010 at 9:45 am and is filed under Health Care Legislation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.