Only a few months into America’s new Obamacare era, most child-only policies were dropped by private insurance carriers due to the poorly written legislation that would allow parents to sign up their kids after they were sick or injured and leave the carriers bearing all the costs.
The child-only coverage is just the latest problem to arise from the massive 2,500 page health care overhaul legislation. Earlier this month large corporations, like McDonalds, requested special exemptions from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in order to preserve plans they have in place for part-time employees.
This left the White House scrambling to cover children as promised by law, and allowed the insurance carriers to raise premiums for child-only policies in order to offset expenditures.
Insurance companies as well as brokers only discovered the last minute purchase option the government included in the bill once Obama signed the bill into law. This provision would have placed a significant burden on revenue and force companies to ration benefits to in order to stay in business.
As a result, insurance companies established an open-enrollment period where companies will accept all children, regardless of health, for a one month time period, once the enrollment period ends parents can purchase insurance coverage for their children, but the policy could be tripled.
Once the administration reviewed the paperwork they gave health insurance carriers the green light to raise the rates more expensive child-only policies.