The Affordable Care Act is intended to both expand access to health care and make existing health care plans more useful for consumers. One of the enhancements to health plans under health care reform is the elimination of dollar limit restrictions. Beginning 2014, non-grandfathered health plans are prohibited from placing lifetime dollar limits on essential health benefits and are restricted from placing annual dollar limits on health benefits. Annual dollar limits may be phased out before 2014, when they must be eliminated.
The Department of Health and Human Services has calculated the number of Americans with private health insurance who will no longer face lifetime limits on their care. According to government estimates, approximately 70 million people in large employer plans, 25 million in small employer plans, and 10 million people with individual health coverage had lifetime limits placed on their benefits before the passage of the Affordable Care Act. These 105 million Americans now have coverage without lifetime limits.
Among the 105 million Americans for whom lifetime limits have been eliminated, approximately 75.3 million are non-Latino White, 11.8 million are Latino, 10.4 million are African-American, 5.5 million are Asian, and approximately 500,000 are American Indian or Alaska Native. Approximately 28 million of those benefiting are children, with the remainder of the 105 million split almost equally between adult men and adult women. A state-by-state analysis of the impact of the restriction on annual and lifetime limits can be found at http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/LifetimeLimits/ib.shtml.
