Health-care changes are arriving - slowly

Ken Weinstein plans to offer health insurance to four more of his employees this year, three at a real estate business and one at the Trolley Car Diner in Mount Airy.

In Lower Merion, Chris Vanni, 22 and just out of college, is now able to stay on his family's insurance at no extra cost. Yet Christine Rowe, who lives in Lansdale, is still struggling to find private insurance for her 8-year-old son, who has hemophilia.

These three are among the millions of Americans already exploring realities of the health-care overhaul, provisions likely to remain in place even as lawmakers threaten to repeal or defund it. Several key measures began taking effect for insurance plans written or renewed starting in September. More are scheduled for 2011, some benefiting consumers directly, others affecting insurance companies in various ways.

A judge in Virginia ruled last month that a central part of the law enacted in March - the mandate that nearly everyone buy insurance in 2014 - was unconstitutional. Two federal judges have disagreed, and the matter is expected to reach the Supreme Court. But the consumer protections already in progress are less controversial.

"Even people who may be opposed to the law overall, when asked about these particular provisions, they tend to be supportive," said Jennifer Tolbert, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Among them is a tax credit, beginning with the 2010 return, for small businesses that offer insurance to employees. The credit is available to businesses whose employees make less than $50,000 on average, and it is worth up to 35 percent of what the employer spends on insurance.

Weinstein said that he currently insured two employees - including himself - and that the tax credit would help him add four managers to the plan. He has 55 full- and part-time workers, mostly at the diner, and said he would have to raise menu prices to cover more of them.

"We need to offer small businesses like mine an incentive to insure more people," he said, adding that premiums had risen 15 to 20 percent a year. The legislation, he said, is "a move in the right direction."

The law also allows young adults to remain covered by their family's plans up to age 26. As Chris Vanni approached college graduation last year, his father, Cigus, researched individual plans and found they would cost at least $600 per month.

The father said he would have paid for it, but the ability to keep his son on the family plan was "an enormous relief."