Commentary

The 'Essential Health Benefits' Package


 

Question: The HHS has been criticized for giving the states too much flexibility. Is there a danger that the plans will not be comprehensive enough?

Mr. Howard: There’s always that danger. That’s one of the areas where we really need a little more definition of what the HHS is going to require. For example, we know that they are going to allow actuarial equivalence in the benefits. But we don’t know whether that will be within one of those 10 categories or across categories. And we don’t know how much variability they are going to allow. The adequacy of the benefit package is going to depend a lot on those subsequent decisions from the HHS.

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