At a White House event featuring First Lady Michelle Obama, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury announced new regulations requiring new private health plans to cover evidence-based preventive services and eliminate cost-sharing requirements for those services.
The new rules will help people covered under these new plans to get free access to tests and screenings aimed at early detection of such conditions as high-blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and cancer. Also included in the regulations are routine vaccinations, pre-natal care and regular wellness visit for infants and children, including obesity screening.
"Too many Americans don't get the preventive care they need to stay healthy, avoid or delay the onset of disease, lead productive lives and reduce healthcare costs." said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "The administration is laying the foundation to help transform the healthcare system from a system that focuses on treating the sick to a system that focuses on keeping every American healthy."
The regulations, which fall under the Affordable Care Act passed earlier this year, included a provision of $15 billion for preventive healthcare.
The announcement isn't expected to draw criticism from opponents of the administration's landmark health law, as preventive care was one of the few topics in the contentious healthcare debate that garnered widespread support from both sides of the aisle.
A key provision of the new regulations is the elimination of cost-sharing tfor preventive healthcare services. Cost-sharing, which includes meeting deductibles, copayments or co-insurance, reduces the likelihood that preventive services will be used.
"Getting access to early care and screenings will go a long way in preventing chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure," said Michelle Obama, who also noted the new regulations should help address a problem of epidemic proportions in this country: childhood obesity.
According to information from the Centers for Disease Control, chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes are responsible for seven in 10 deaths in this country and account for 75 percent of the nation's healthcare spending every year. Many of these diseases are either preventable or have significantly higher cure rates when detected early.
Yet a high rate of people covered by private health insurance – 11 million children and 59 million adults – don't have plans that adequately cover these services.
"One of the best ways to improve the quality of your life – and control healthcare costs – is to prevent disease in the first place," noted Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joseph Biden. "Quite simply, these preventive services will save lives."
The Trust for America's Health, a non-partisan, non-profit organization focused on making prevention a priority in healthcare, had high praise for the new regulations.
"These new prevention rules are groundbreaking," said Jeffrey Levi, PhD, the group's executive director. "They represent a new era of healthcare – moving us away from a sick care system that only treats people after they are already sick to a system that will also help keep millions of Americans healthier in the first place."