Under the Affordable Care Act, 105 million Americans no longer face lifetime limits on health benefits
The Affordable Care Act prohibits health plans from imposing a lifetime dollar limit on most benefits received by Americans in any health plan renewing on or after September 23, 2010. While some plans already provided coverage with no limits on lifetime benefits, millions of Americans were previously in health plans that did not.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Employer Health Benefits Survey, 59 percent of all workers covered by their employer’s health plan in 2009 had some lifetime limit placed on their benefits.1 In addition, 89 percent of people with individually purchased coverage had a lifetime limit on benefits.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimated the number of Americans receiving these new protections, combining results from the 2009 Kaiser employer survey and 2009 America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) report with data from the 2009 to 2011 versions of the Current Population Survey (covering calendar years 2008-2010).
