Health Care Reform: Free Preventive Health Care

This is huge in so many ways, to many for a non medical professional like myself to break it all down.

New Insurance Rules: Free Preventive Health Care

White House Says Insurance Plans Will Cover Cancer Screening and Other Services Without Co-pays

July 14, 2010 -- A variety of preventive services, from immunizations to colonoscopies, is due to be covered without cost to consumers under new insurance plans as part of the health care reform bill.

The new provisions were announced Wednesday afternoon by first lady Michelle Obama, Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Under the new rules, if you enroll in a new health plan on or after Sept. 23, 2010, the plan must provide recommended preventive care services without cost-sharing such as co-pays or deductibles.

Details of the provisions were provided at a news teleconference by Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House director of health care reform, and Stephanie Cutter, assistant to the president for special projects.

"Starting on Sept. 23, all new plans have to cover a comprehensive range of preventive services'' recommended by doctors and other experts, without out-of-pocket costs, DeParle said. Preventive Care: What's Covered? Continued

So I'll let the above explain as well as Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the White House:

Prevention is a Priority -- Now It's a Reality

July 14, 2010 Earlier today, I joined First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden to discuss how the Affordable Care Act will give millions of Americans access to preventive care through their private health insurance.

Today, too many Americans today aren't getting the preventive health care they need. Right now, for example, 59 million adults and 11 million children depend on private health insurance that doesn't adequately cover immunizations. And 12 percent of children haven't visited a doctor in the last year.

The statistics are even more troubling in our minority communities. African-American mothers are 2.5 times as likely as white mothers to begin prenatal care in the 3rd trimester, or not receive it at all. And only 37 percent of Latinos were screened for colon cancer in 2007, compared to 57 percent of whites. Continued

Read the Transcript

The long term effects of this will start to be seen as it's implemented and be even more noticeable for the younger adults and especially children who have this advantage early and take better care of themselves as they continue to use this ability, especially in the greater masses of this society that don't have the wealth and even less then to afford early detection or prevention.