Aim higher, reach further.

The Health Law Rollout

The 2010 Affordable Care Act is a huge law that confuses most Americans. This page is designed to make it easier to follow it as it takes effect.


There are a number of ways they'll get it. Americans in most states earning up to just above the poverty level – anywhere up to $32,500 a year for a family of four – next year will be able to enroll in Medicaid, a federal-state program that has long covered the poor and will grow larger under the law.

For those earning between $29,440 and $117,600 for a family of four annually, the law will provide a sliding scale of government subsidies towards the cost of buying health insurance if they don't get it from their employer next year. These consumers will be directed to buy private plans through health insurance exchanges run by states or the federal government.

Find Your State's Health-Insurance Exchange

No matter how much you earn, if your employer doesn't provide your health insurance, you can use these exchanges to shop for a health plan starting in October. These marketplaces will work like popular travel sites and allow you to compare plans side-by-side based on their price and the generosity of their coverage.

With all this comes a requirement that most Americans carry insurance or pay a penalty that starts at $95 a year in 2014. Larger employers, too, will have to pay a fine, starting in 2015, if they don't offer workers a set level of health coverage considered to be affordable.

Under this new system, insurance companies will not be allowed to deny people based on their medical history, and they'll have less room to vary their insurance rates. Carriers have to include a set range of health benefits in plans, cover preventive care services without any out-of-pocket costs for the consumer, allow parents to include adult children on their plans up to their 26th birthdays and cannot cap payouts.

Medical providers face changes, too. Hospitals will lose some federal funds for treating large numbers of uninsured patients, and drug companies have to offer rebates to seniors to help them with the cost of prescription drugs. Hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes will be levied on health companies in order to foot the bill for the expanded insurance coverage.

The law has a secondary aim of reducing the growth of health-care costs, but even supporters of the overhaul say it falls short in that area. The small steps in that direction include rules that force insures to spend a certain portion of revenue on medical care, and hospital reimbursements tied to performance incentives.

Want to know more? Read on for answers to the most common questions about the law, and a deeper dive into what the law means for employers, health companies and states.

Ronald Gumbs
Ronald Gumbs

The Affordable Care Act relies on prevention and this will be effective in reducing the cost of healthcare. As a senior citizen, I'm focused on the problem of Alzheimer's Dementia which is projected to bankrupt the nation as the Baby Boomers become senior citizens.

Is it Dementia or simple absent-mindedness? Can we prevent the loss of neurons? And can be generate new neurons? How do we increase cognitive function? Or extend the preclinical stage? Can we reverse mild cognitive impairment? How can we delay the onset of Dementia? Can food be used as medicine to prevent, treat and reverse mild cognitive impairment?

It is known that a Vitamin E supplement slows decline of cognitive function of some Alzheimer's patients in a recent study. So, do foods containing Vitamin E slow the decline without the side effects of the supplement used in the clinical study? In addition, the spice saffron is as efficacious as Aricept. And ginger and apple juice appear to protect human nerve cells from the neurotoxic Alzheimer’s plaque protein amyloid Beta in a petri dish.

To be sure, there is an abundance of data on the effect of nutrition on the risk and protective factors; over 600 papers published a year on prevention. This suggests that the adoption of a prevention diet during the preclinical stages might delay the onset Alzheimer’s Dementia. A delay of 5 years reduces the projected number of AD sufferers by 50%.

Eric Copt
Eric Copt subscriber

To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the US Congress:
It’s now official that the majority of you are corrupt and ineffective:
The US Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 237 years to get it right and it is broke.
Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 77 years to get it right and it is broke.
Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 48 years to get it right: $ 1 trillion of tax payer money is confiscated each year and transferred to “the poor” and they only want more.
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 47 years to get it right and they are both broke.
Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 42 years to get it right and it is broke.
The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lesson our dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Department has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 35 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
You have FAILED in every “government service” you have shoved down our throats while overspending and wasting our tax dollars. And, you want Americans to believe you can be trusted with a Government Health Care System, 20% of the US economy.
You must be joking!

james miller
james miller subscriberaccountSuspended

Our Blue Shield premiums will increase 1% in 2014, benefits are reduced by about a quarter on average. Some deal.

Charles Aulbach
Charles Aulbach subscriber

Matt- I have no academic sources for the 30 million uninsured figure. I recall that it was published in the popular press, but since I read voraciously and broadly, I don't recall where I read (or heard) this was a few years ago, as you know. I could be mistaken, but I think I'm correct. You couild probably look it up in some HHS government documents from the 2008-10 time period, but the US government website is down for some unexplained reason ('shutdown' is insufficient for an explanation...I'd like to see chapter and verse cited).

Charles Aulbach
Charles Aulbach subscriber

How will we the people, the 'recipients' of this largesse pay for it? As I recall, during the Democrat's selling of this back during the Pelosi days, America needed this law to protect 30 million people who didn't have healthcare. Now, after all the expense of setting this program up, we will still have 30 million people without healthcare. The same people? Some other people? Surely not Democrats; must be Republicans or Independents.

What a sad, tremendous waste of human energy and knowledge: a medical system designed by politicians. It's to die for (from).

Cato Vaysman
Cato Vaysman subscriberprofilePrivate

What is ACA? A death knell for the world's best HC system.

Matt Belanger
Matt Belanger

Do you have academic sources that say we will still have 30 million Americans without healthcare that you could provide?

William Charles
William Charles subscriber

Keep in mind that if ANYONE signs up for Obamacare there goes their right to privacy! They will suck as much wealth as they possibly can from anyone they can to pay for this monstrosity and their irresponsible largess. Quite frankly, they will have successfully destroyed what was once a reasonable and innovative health system. They don't even realize that they are, indeed, as dumb as a sack of rocks.

And to think that such a very, very small group of ignorant and clueless policy makers will have brought down an anomalous great empire to it's knees by attempting to subjugate it's citizens to a failed and completely insane ideological welfare statist system.

John Bangston
John Bangston subscriber

Yes. Well 30 million have not signed up.

Show More Archives

Popular on WSJ

Editors’ Picks