Will Child-Only Georgia Health Insurance Plans Be Restored?

When the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law, it changed the way health care was provided for millions of Americans. The health care reform law made several changes in the health insurance industry, but not all of them were intended.

One of the unintended changes in the insurance  https://cbdtackle.com/ involved child-only health care policies. In Georgia and other states, as the Affordable Care Act took hold, insurance companies stopped offering this type of healthcare plan.

Child-only Georgia health insurance plans are usually bought by parents who have an employer-provided health plan that does not include dependent coverage, or has dependent coverage they just can’t afford. Sometimes these plans are bought by parents who can’t get health coverage for themselves due to health reasons and still want to provide coverage for their children. And sometimes, these are bought by parents whose income does not qualify for their kids to get coverage under Medicaid or PeachCare.

How Did The Affordable Care Act Affect Child-Only Policies?

One of the mandates of the act is that no children with pre-existing conditions can be denied health coverage. In response to this mandate, insurance companies in various states, including Georgia, stopped offering new individual plans that only cover children.

According to the insurance industry, under this new requirement, parents could postpone getting health care coverage for their children until the kids were sick. The industry said that this would cause a rise in unprofitable health care plans and skyrocketing expenses for the insurance companies to budget.

Will Child-Only Georgia Health Insurance Plans Return?

An increasing number of states have made a move to address the loss of availability of child-only health care policies, either through legislation or regulation.