Preventive Health Services for PA Residents

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Affordable Care Act extended free preventive services to 2,363,000 Pennsylvania residents with private health insurance in 2011

 

Free preventive care also provided to 1,507,983 Pennsylvania residents in Medicare

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that the Affordable Care Act provided approximately 2,363,000 Pennsylvania residents with at least one new free preventive service in 2011 through their private health insurance plans. Secretary Sebelius also announced that an estimated 1,507,983 Pennsylvania residents with Medicare received at least one free preventive benefit in 2011, including the new Annual Wellness Visit, since the health reform law was enacted.

Together, this means an estimated 3,870,983 Pennsylvania residents were helped by health reform’s prevention coverage improvements. The new data were released in two new reports from HHS.

 “Americans of all ages can now get the preventive services they need, like mammograms and the new Annual Wellness Visit, free of charge, as a result of the new health care law,” Secretary Sebelius said. “With more people taking advantage of these benefits, more lives can be saved, and costly, and often burdensome, diseases can be prevented or caught earlier.”

Nationwide, the Affordable Care Act provided approximately 54 million Americans with at least one new free preventive service in 2011 through their private health insurance plans. And an estimated 32.5 million people with Medicare received at least one free preventive benefit in 2011, including the new Annual Wellness Visit, since the health reform law was enacted. Together, this means an estimated 86 million Americans were helped by health reform’s prevention coverage improvements. 

The Affordable Care Act requires many insurance plans to provide coverage without cost sharing to enrollees for a variety of preventive health services, such as colonoscopy screening for colon cancer, Pap smears and mammograms for women, well-child visits, and flu shots for all children and adults. The law also makes proven preventive services free for most people on Medicare.

The report on private health insurance coverage also examined the expansion of free preventive services in minority populations.  The results showed that an estimated 6.1 million Latinos, 5.5 million Blacks, 2.7 million Asian Americans and 300,000 Native Americans across the country with private insurance received expanded preventive benefits coverage in 2011 as a result of the new health care law.

The report discussing Medicare preventive services found that more than 25.7 million Americans (1,014,420 Pennsylvania residents) in traditional Medicare received free preventive services in 2011. The report also looked at Medicare Advantage plans and found that 9.3 million Americans (670,870 Pennsylvania residents) – 97 percent of those in individual Medicare Advantage plans – were enrolled in a plan that offered free preventive services.  Assuming that people in Medicare Advantage plans utilized preventive services at the same rate as those with traditional Medicare, an estimated 32.5 million Americans (1,507,983 Pennsylvania residents) benefited from Medicare’s coverage of prevention with no cost sharing.

The full report on expanded preventive benefits in private health insurance is available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/PreventiveServices/ib.shtml.  The report on expanded preventive benefits in Medicare and other ways that the Affordable Care Act strengthens Medicare is available at http://www.cms.gov/newsroom/.