What to expect from health care reform if you buy a new individual policy today

Our customer service representatives at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan are getting lots of questions from members who buy individual plan coverage asking about changes in store from health care reform.

We take a look at some of those changes as we conclude our week-long series exploring what reform means to you.

How health care reform impacts ‘Cadillac’ plans, small businesses and group plans

One of the central talking points for health care reform during the long and heated push for its enactment was that if you currently receive health insurance from your employer, and you like your plan, you get to keep it.

But health care reform does make a few important changes to benefit-rich “Cadillac” group plans, and it will incentivize small business owners to begin offering health insurance for workers by providing tax credits.

As part of our weeklong series exploring what the changes mean for Michigan Blues members, we delve into some of your most commonly asked questions. You can also check out yesterday’s post about individual-market policy impacts, or our earlier post outlining the changes more broadly.

And as always, we welcome your comments and questions.

What health care reform means for Michigan Blues members who buy individual policies

All this week in this space, we’ll be sharing our responses to many of the most commonly asked questions posed by Blues customers who wonder how health care reform will affect their policies and families.

The series is meant as a deeper dive into changes we first discussed in a previous blog post. While many of the provisions cannot be explained in further detail until we get guidance from the federal government, we’ll share with you what we know now.

We’ll start with changes that will affect customers who get their coverage from one of our individual plans.