There’s a reason the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act is thousands of pages long. Much of it, of course, is because of the sweeping changes it makes to the already complex U.S. healthcare system.
But tucked inside are dozens of other small, strange or surprising ACA provisions that got slipped in for any number of reasons – some to help pay for insurance expansion, for example, and others because they were favorites of key legislators.
For example, the law authorizes funds to be doled out to support “personal responsibility” programs for young adults, treatment of postpartum depression for new moms and abstinence education, for example.
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Adrianna McIntyre of Vox drew our attention to some of the most interesting ones in a post last week.
- Beginning in 2016, states will be able to form “interstate health compacts” that will allow their residents to purchase insurance plans offered by carriers in other states, once they are approved by HHS. A number of states have already enacted legislation supporting such a compact.
- As of last year, employers are required to disclose the full cost of an employer-sponsored health insurance plan on employees’ W-2 tax forms. The reasoning? People often don’t have a concept of just how much their employers are paying for coverage, so this provision was intended to make them more cost-conscious.
- To the chagrin of many doctors and policy wonks, the ACA doesn’t prescribe any changes to the rules around how lawsuits accusing doctors of malpractice or medical errors are handled. It does, however, authorize $50 million in funding for states to experiment with tort reform.
- The law created the Elder Justice Act, which designates federal funding to support research aimed at preventing and understanding elder abuse and intervening where appropriate. This includes physical, mental, emotional or financial exploitation. Under the act, HHS oversees the creation of a coordinating council, an advisory board, elder abuse forensic centers and grants for state agencies and adult protective service offices.
Read McIntyre’s 21-point list here.
