DeLauro Statement on New, Clearly Worded “Summary Of Benefits”

Created Under Landmark Health Care Reform, Will HelpConsumers

NEW HAVEN, CT—Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) released thefollowing statement today, marking the day health insurance companies will haveto begin explaining their policies to consumers in plain English. This"summary of benefits" must be provided to all applicants and enrollees. The requirement was included as part of the Affordable Care Act, the landmarkhealth care reform that Congress passed in 2010 and the Supreme Court upheldlast June.

"Before these summaries, consumers often could not figureout what they were getting, since the details of health insurance plans wereobfuscated and often buried in lengthy documents full of legal and actuarialterms. Health insurance was a black box, and people practically needed ateam of lawyers just to understand the fine print of a coverage policy. As aresult, Americans would buy coverage they thought was comprehensive, only torealize once they actually got sick that it had huge gaps.

"So we wanted to make sure moving forward that insurers hadto reveal basic information about their plans – things like deductibles,out-of-pocket expenses and limits, services not covered by the plan – in astandardized format, so consumers can make head or tail of the plans beingoffered. The new summaries of benefits and coverage are in plain Englishand are designed in a way that is much more helpful than the several-hundredpage book on a plan that we used to have to sort through when comparing ouroptions. They also include a couple of real life examples of how a planwould work for specific situations.

"Millions of Americans will benefit from these summaries,including over 90 percent of Americans insured through a job-based plan and 2.3million men and women under 65 in Connecticut – over 75% of the non-elderlypopulation.

"This is just one of the many benefits we included in theAffordable Care Act. And it is great to see them going into effect, andchanging our health insurance system for the better.