health care options

Don't expect a sudden change. But be ready to gather information and make decisions about your health care options.

The healthcare debate is confusing, but there will be time to sort out the results.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—A day doesn't pass lately when we don't hear or read some different angle on the ongoing healthcare reform debate. Public option, or no public option? Deficit breaker, or deficit maker? Will it will cost us all more money for insurance, or won't it? Abortion ban, or the status quo?
What are we to make of all this, and how do we figure out our health care options in all this drama?

First step is to relax, says an expert from Indiana University.

THE DETAILS: "Take a deep breath," advises Aaron E. Carroll, MD, a physician and the director of the university's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research. Nothing, he said, is likely to take effect until 2013, so whatever happens we'll each have plenty of time to figure out the impact on our health care options, and what we need to do in advance. Complicating that situation even more is Dr. Carroll's expectation that no matter what Congress does in the near future, details of the plan are likely to keep changing until 2013 because of changes in the economy between now and then. He says that people who stand to benefit the most from the reforms are those who buy their own plans on the open market. The prices for those plans may well come down because of the formation of "pools" of such buyers. Legislation would also prevent insurers from denying coverage, or jacking up rates for preexisting conditions; both those changes would also benefit group-coverage buyers more than those covered through workplace plans.

Dr. Carroll also expects that insurance rates for people with group coverage will continue to increase over those years—something that would happen whether the reform bills are eventually made law or they're not, he said.