Health care reforms’ carrot and stick

The Obama administration has a message for employers who want to keep bureaucrats from rewriting the rules for company medical plans: If you don’t jack up costs for workers, you won’t have to worry about interference from the nation’s new health care law.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius was announcing a new regulation that spells out how health plans that predate the health overhaul law can avoid its full impact.

It was meant to deliver on President Barack Obama’s promise that people who like their current health coverage can keep it. The rule sets limits likely to become increasingly important as medical costs keep rising.

Workplace coverage is the mainstay of the nation’s health insurance system, and will remain so under the new law.

Associated Press