The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often shortened to the Affordable Act (ACA Care) or nicknamed Obamacare, is a United States federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010.
The Act includes provisions to take effect between 2010 and 2020, although most took effect on January 1st, 2014. The Affordable Care Act protects individuals from arbitrary decisions by commercial insurance payers, including cancellation of coverage due to an honest mistake, and gives patients the right to request reconsideration if a claim is denied.
What does Obamacare really mean to someone like me, an “in the trenches” medical biller? First of all it means that people will be looking to me to answer questions about their insurance now that Obamacare is here. But I have as many questions as they do. The one thing Obamacare has done is put everyone in the same boat, a boat called limbo. We don’t really know how it’s all going to work.
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Other features include a ban on lifetime coverage limits for new health insurance plans and a requirement that insurance companies do not make unreasonable rate increases. Consumers can buy these policies through the Health Insurance Marketplace (also known as Exchanges) during open enrollment, which occurs annually from November 15 through February 15 each year.
A Special enrollment is also available outside this period for people who experience life-changing events, such as the birth of a child, the death of a spouse, and other examples. If a patient is enrolled in a plan covered under the Affordable Care Act, this does not necessarily mean your office may accept a plan.
As a rule, any Affordable Care Act plan card has a slightly different filing instruction and it may not have a group number and/ or employer name like commercial cards.
When scheduling appointments for consumers with Affordable Care Act cards, it is a good idea to probe a bit in order to identify who the actual payer is.
“The Affordable Care Act has greatly changed the professional landscape for medical coders and billers. There are ways to take part in the growing field of health care without scrubbing in every day and committing many years to advanced schooling. Those with medical billing and coding certification can make a real difference in people’s lives and in the health care industry”.