Prep now for the Supreme Court’s ruling on health care reform

Sometime over the next two weeks, the Supreme Court is expected to divulge its ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, also known as health care reform.

Here’s the link to GovTrack’s page on the massive law, which includes a summary and link to full text.   Now is a good time to be bookmarking such resources and planning your coverage for whichever way the high court rules.

Consumers and businesses will be affected if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 remains alive.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has a very useful portal about the law, including an implementation timeline of when various provisions did/are to take effect.  The timeline also functions as a handy cheat sheet for reporters aiming to tell readers what they keep in the event the law is upheld, or what they risk losing if it’s overturned.

Keeping in mind that at least one insurer, United Health, has said it will keep some provisions of the new law – like allowing adult children to stay on their parents’ policies longer – regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling.   So you’ll want to check with your area’s big insurers and employers.

Should the law survive, you might want to revisit the rebates health insurers may be paying out to premium-payers this August.  As this Wall Street Journal article recaps, the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to spend a minimum of their revenue from premiums on health care costs, or pay back the difference to customers.  In some cases, employers and other plan sponsors will receive the refunds, but individual policy purchasers may receive direct payments.

Once again, Kaiser to the rescue with this state-by-state estimate of where the expected $1.3 billion in rebates will go; the entire report is in a PDF that details dollar amounts and other data by state. And note that in some states — Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina — the federal government is allowing the law to phase in slowly.

As a corollary to the rebate story, I like what the Chattanooga Times Free Press did in summarizing the financial status of its area’s largest insurer — including revenue, cash reserves, profits and CEO pay.

Consumers and some businesses may lose out on the rebates if the health care law is completely tossed out.  And it’s unclear how quickly any other changes would take place; would things like free preventative screenings be eliminated right away or at the next open enrollment period?  And will a ruling against the law trigger a rush on such services as people scurry to avail themselves before the provisions expire?  You might check with physicians’ practices, clinics and hospitals about whether they are preparing for any change in demand.  Here’s a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention press release, just out, about the effects of the preventative care provisions since 2010.

Small businesses, on the other hand, may rejoice. In the aggregate they oppose the ACA through their major industry group, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (which is the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case).

You might want to check out the state contacts for the NFIB and line up some members for reaction ahead of time, so you’re ready to make calls and pop a localized story online as soon as the court ruling is made public.