Nearly 140,000 Connecticut residents will benefit from a new cap on out-of-pocket health insurance expenses, a key provision of the health care reform law, a new report shows.
Families USA, a nonprofit health care consumer advocacy group, released a report Tuesday that shows about 139,100 Connecticut residents under the age of 65 are in families that will spend more than the out-of-pocket caps for services that will soon be covered in the Affordable Care Act’s essential benefits package.
Although the spending caps don’t go in effect until 2014, Families USA asked The Lewin Group, a health care policy research and management consulting firm, to look at the impact of the caps on Connecticut families as if they were going into effect this year.
The research found that out-of-pocket health care spending by Connecticut families will exceed the caps by more than $249.3 million in 2011. That includes $107.2 million spent by  an estimated 59,200 Connecticut residents in families where the head of the household is employed by a small business.
Under the health care reform law, a limit will now be placed on how much people with health coverage pay out-of-pocket for medical care. The spending caps, when adjusted to 2011, would be $5,950 for individuals and $11,900 for families.
“Two decades of rising health care costs have squeezed families into coverage with higher premiums, higher copayments, and higher deductibles, and sometimes these costs have forced families out of health coverage altogether,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. “These families are terribly vulnerable to financial devastation caused by unexpected illness or injury, and they generally face only bad alternatives, including massive credit card debt, bankruptcy, even foreclosure.”
