Obamacare Insurance

When the Affordable Care Act was initially passed, it required everyone to have insurance or pay the penalty for it. This is along with the existing health insurance system that guarantees health insurance for everyone irrespective of their present health condition. If a person satisfies some of the mentioned conditions, there is no penalty for being without health insurance.

However, on December 22, 2017, President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which eliminated the federal tax penalty for violating the individual mandate, starting in 2019. Some states, like California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington, still require everyone to have health insurance.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the health insurance companies must cover 10 sets of categories which include doctors’ services, inpatient and outpatient hospital care, prescription drug coverage, pregnancy and childbirth, mental health services, dental coverage for children and some more. Some plans cover more services and that can be found out by comparing various plans. Also, Dental benefits for adults are optional.

ACA plans came into effect in March 2010 started by former President Barack Obama which was previously named as Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It is a comprehensive plan that aims to bring millions of uninsured Americans to being health insured to protect their savings in future.

There are a total of 10 mandatory benefits under the ACA that it covers which are ambulatory patient services, emergency services hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services including behavioral health treatment, prescription drugs, rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, laboratory services, preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.

• People who can not afford health insurance through their current employer.
• People who are self-employed or work at a job that does not provide health insurance.
• People who need to have private health insurance but have medical conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol.

Although the Marketplace does not differentiate between its own citizens and the immigrants, when it comes to Obamacare, as long as you are legal in this country, you can qualify for ACA. Legality in this country can range from being a US Citizen to having H1B visa, to F1 visa.

No, Obamacare cannot be used out of state to see a doctor in their office, get lab work, etc. While in other states, you can only obtain life-threatening emergency services by going to the local hospital. Examples of life-threatening emergencies can be chest pain, shortness of breath, car accident, numbness of the arm. However, if you are out on vacation, and it is not a life threatening emergency, like low grade fever, you can always do telehealth and get treatment.

By going to Healthcare Marketplace, www.healthcare.gov,, there is an option to move your state and if you want to be insured even if you move out of your state, you need to report it to the marketplace by updating your details on the website. This has to be done on an immediate basis.

Your Obamacare will not be active if you move out of your home state. In order to make sure that you are still insured even after moving out of state, you need to update your details in the marketplace by visiting www.healthcare.gov.

Obamacare does not cover you if you are out of the network, which means you will not be covered if you are travelling outside the country and not even emergency services will be provided. For that, you need to take travel medical insurance which is separate insurance altogether.

Yes, ACA covers telehealth.

Twenty-six states in the US have laws that require all the private health insurance providers to provide telemedicine services as well and ten more states are considering bringing this law into effect. This precisely means almost all the health insurance providers in most of the states provide telemedicine services.