ObamaCare brought a slew of new legislation. About 1/25th of the ideas were good in my humble opinion. The rest were not properly thought out. Last spring the “overage dependant to age 26 law” took effect. Most carriers simply allowed dependants to stay on the policy if they already were. If the dependant had been off the parent’s plan the carriers made parents wait until the company plan had an open enrollment. We went through a month of confusion with all of that.

School documentation was no longer required. The child did not need to prove that they were dependant on the parent or even live at home. Some smaller companies benefited from this because their employees could stay on their parent’s group plan and not enroll in their own company plan. This was supposed to happen but who is watching? No other dependant program from the State or Federal government matches this liberal treatment. The commercial market is the only reciepient of the law. Consider the foster care program. As soon as the foster child is 18 they are encouraged to apply for Medi-Cal and can be enrolled in Medi-Cal until age 21. Healthy Families allows a child to remain on their low cost program until they are 18. I don’t think of myself as a conspriracy theorist, but I do find it interesting that non-publically funded programs have been selected for this ObamaCare law.

The ripple effect is larger then one thinks. Consider the fact that the dependants can have children while covered on the plan. Those children may not be automatically added to the parent’s plan but they are as a Cobra member. Cobra members add to the burden of the employer through evaluations called utilization. Fancy way to say that it could cause the employer’s plan to be rated up. July 2011 brings a variety of increases. The highest increases so far have been given to employee and family or employee and children. Anthem has given one of my clients a 29% bump on their employee and family premium.

One can only imagine that out of 2,000 pages, something valuable was contained within the Patient Protection Act. Quite frankly I am pleased that Emergency Care allowed for benefits to be met as “in-network”. The only carrier in California that did not allow for this was Anthem Blue Cross. This out of network detail was a nasty little downgrade Anthem implemented a couple of years back. When I asked my agent compatriots about it, they did not know. If you were unfortunate enough to be hospitalized with a non contracted hospital, Anthem would only pay $750 a day. See why I call it the nasty little downgrade? I have always felt that these nasty little secrets accumulated to the great dissatisfaction that lead up to the Patient Protection Act also known as ObamaCare.

Hang in there. We are a nation of the most imaginative people with the finest government in the world.  We have our fights over left and right.  That helps keep us from being dominated by total corruption.

My New Years Wishes for all of us.

Health: Strive to a healthier place. Lose some weight and get more active.

Honesty:  Work on personal integrity each day.

Pay it forward: Do something good for someone without being noticed.