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"   Today is a landmark day for your wallet and your health. That&amp;#039;s because the Affordable Care Act, aka the health bill passed in March, went into effect this morning, promising vast improvements to many Americans&amp;#039; health insurance and a number of changes that could save you lots of cash. Even better, many of those changes will directly benefit women in their twenties and thirties. Here are some of the adjustments you might notice. Just remember that even though the Act was signed into law by President Obama six months ago and kicks in today, most of these provisions will only apply to you once you renew or change your health insurance plan. You should be able to find out when you&amp;#039;re eligible to do that by calling your provider. You won&amp;#039;t have to get a referral. Previously, some policies made you use a &amp;quot;gatekeeper&amp;quot; (ie, your general practitioner) to be able to see a specialist, explains Hilary Haycock, Counselor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. That meant paying double the copay and losing an hour (or more) of your day just to make an appointment with a dermatologist or gyno. But under the new act, you can see any doctor in your network without having to get anyone&amp;#039;s OK first. You can be on your parents&amp;#039; plan until you&amp;#039;re 26! In many states, most young people used to be cut off once they were out of college. But now, if you don&amp;#039;t have a job or don&amp;#039;t have a job that offers you insurance and are under 26 you can remain on your parents&amp;#039; insurance. Insurance companies won&amp;#039;t be able to drop your coverage for seemingly random reasons. Until today, it wasn&amp;#039;t uncommon for people to submit claims for surgery or other big medical expenses, only to be denied because they made an inadvertent administrative mistake their application years ago, says Haycock. You don&amp;#039;t have to worry about getting charged thousands for an ER visit. Before the reform, insurance companies could limit the emergency rooms you visited, meaning if you went to the nearest hospital that wasn&amp;#039;t in your network or were out of town, far from the ERs your company covered, you could get saddled with a major bill. Not anymore, explains Haycock: &amp;quot;In recent years Congress has been trying to protect people in emergency situations and under the act, you won&amp;#039;t be limited to specific emergency rooms,&amp;quot; she said. Most preventative care is covered. It used to be that providers weren&amp;#039;t required to cover measures such as the HPV vaccine, STD screenings, pap smears, and cholesterol checks. Ridiculous, right? Well, starting today, those are all covered along with many other procedures and checkups. And on top of that, you won&amp;#039;t even have to pay a copay to get the services. We do have one issue with the act, though: skin cancer screenings don&amp;#039;t fall under this category. Come on! Do they really not know the importance of seeing a derm for a skin check every year? Have you ever had problems with your insurance provider? Do you think the Affordable Care Act will improve things? Are you as pissed as we are that skin checks aren&amp;#039;t included in the list of preventative care required to be covered? For more information on the Affordable Care Act, check out HealthCare.gov. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/news/a8855/affordable-care-act-improvements/?click=rel>