In particular for families of children with disabilities, Thursday's Supreme Court ruling upholding most of the Affordable Care Act may come as a huge relief.
Other government health insurance programs, including Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, have filled some of the gaps in health insurance coverage for people with disabilities before the health care law, but they didn't go far enough.
Dr. Paul Lipkin, who works with children who have developmental disorders, and has also worked closely with children with cerebral palsy and premature infants, said these families may be especially grateful for some of the law's provisions.
For one thing, the law removes lifetime limits on coverage that many insurance companies now pose.
"For a person with chronic health issues, lifetime caps have always been something that have been feared," Lipkin said. A child with cerebral palsy may have run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses by the time they are an adult.
For some people, the caps could be worked around by switching insurers, but for children with disabilities and their families, that wasn't much of an option: The disability was considered a preexisting condition and grounds for a company to deny coverage.
Read more of Nirvi Shah's On Special Education article HERE.
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