Fringe Benefit: Limited Benefit Products Can Survive ACA 

Fringe Benefits Group Inc., Austin, Texas, believes that ACA – the package that includes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act – will ban “true group” limited benefit plans, by banning plans that use annual or lifetime benefits maximums.

The new bans on benefit caps could affect group plans that start to renew starting in September, according to John Conkling, a vice president at Fringe Benefit.

The affected plans will be the plans that issued “letters of creditable coverage” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Conkling says.

Indemnity-based limited benefit plans that are filed as supplemental insurance products are exempt from the new benefit cap regulations, and insurers should still be able to sell those products, Conkling says.

Fringe Benefit believes it can continue to sell its own Framework Health Plan products, because those are designed as supplemental products, Conkling says

• • 5/21/2010 2:26:27 PM
  • joe d
  • You sure?
  • I question whether the reform will "ban true group limited benefit plans"... limited benefit plans are not health insurance, they are indemnity plans. Unfortunately the damn bill is 10,000,000 pages long so nobody knows anything.

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