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Affordable insurance - One of the key policy components to the affordable care act is the part of the policy that deals with rate review, and how that impacts your ability to obtain affordable insurance.  Rate review is what an insurance company must undergo if they want to increase your insurance policy by more than 10%, and can really mean the difference between affordable insurance and not affordable insurance.  An annual increase of more than 10% certainly doesn’t sound like affordable insurance, and many regulators agree.  With the new rate review policy, a board is created in each state that must listen to insurance companies justify why a rate increase is necessary, and the board considers whether it makes it so that affordable insurance is no longer available to consumers.

Affordable insurance - When a health insurance company presents their justification to a rate increase to the state or federal rate review board, these justifications are then posted on the internet.  You, as a member of the public impacted by these rate increases, are then given the opportunity to say why this new rate increase will create a situation for more or less affordable insurance available to you.  The government would like to make sure that you have affordable insurance options available to you, so they will take all of your comments seriously. If you think the rate increase would create a situation where affordable insurance is no longer available, be sure to comment on this situation.

One big thing that the rate review board will be looking for is whether or not the rate increase will create different health costs for different people who are seeking similar types of treatment.  This act tries to make sure that affordable insurance is applied equally to people. 
Some states have already had rate review programs that have reviewed this type of rate increase, and sought to keep affordable insurance available to its residents. 

However, some other states either don’t have this type of program, or their affordable insurance rate review board has been shown to be ineffective.  If that is the case, then the federal government will step in and do the work of the state rate review board.  The government wants to make sure that this rate review board is not an ineffective board, but really a board that insures the availability of affordable insurance to people.  Charging an increase of over ten percent in rates in a single year definitely can mean the difference between affordable insurance and not affordable insurance to many people.  That can really make a budget change dramatically.
There are many new changes to how insurances and health care are being regulated in this country and all of the information can be confusing.  Thankfully, there is clear information about the policies available to you on the federal government’s web page.  These pages both describe how things used to be as well as what changes are taking place as a part of the new Affordable Care Act.  You can review how your health care costs and affordable insurance options might be impacted there.