A lot of people are worried by a rumor floating around that the healthcare reform bills would ban folks from paying for procedures not covered by their healthcare plans - like if your plan won't pay for an experimental treatment, but you would like to pay for it out of pocket.
I've been meaning to write about how this isn't correct, but just read Ezra Klein's piece here:
Let's begin with Medicare. At issue here is a provision of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. This provision is being sold as some liberal plot, but it turns out to be an amendment by Jon Kyl, a Republican senator from Arizona. It was then put into a bill that was passed through the Republican Senate and then the Republican House. It's a pretty safe bet we're not dealing with liberal overreach here.
What the provision does is regulate how much your doctor can charge Medicare for services Medicare covers. Let's say you need a stent. Medicare will pay $10,000 (I've made this number up) for the operation. But your doctor doesn't want to take $10,000. He wants $20,000, and you want to cover that out of your own pocket. In that case, your doctor has to withdraw from the Medicare program for two years. The intent here is to ensure that doctors don't begin routinely overcharging patients for covered services.
If Medicare, however, had refused to allow your stent, then you could indeed have paid out of pocket.
...
Private insurers have similar rules. If I have insurance through Kaiser, and I go to a doctor, the doctor can't ask me for $500 above what Kaiser reimburses for the service. If Aetna agrees to pay a hospital $900 for an MRI, the hospital can't ask me to give them another grand. Insurers -- both private and public -- enter into contracts with providers, and those contracts have to be honored or the insurance wouldn't be worth much.
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