Yes. The Affordable Care Act, and the new grandfather rule that helps implement it, provide stability and flexibility to insurers and businesses that offer insurance coverage as the nation transitions to a more competitive marketplace in 2014 where businesses and consumers will have affordable choices through Exchanges.

An estimated half of employer-sponsored health plans that insure well over half of American workers and their families will remain grandfathered through 2013. Change is likely to come more swiftly in the individual market because up to two-thirds of individual policyholders switch coverage in a given year so that policies are likely to lose their grandfathered status and consumers will gain new protections more quickly. But this is a market that would experience rapid change even without the grandfathering regulation of health insurance reform.

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The Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury have authority to enforce these provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The Federal government will work closely with the states, which have additional enforcement authority. 

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The rule is "interim final" regulation with a public comment period of 60 days. This means that while it has the effect of a final regulation, the Departments of the Treasury, Labor and HHS, which are issuing the rule, will examine the comments that we receive and make necessary changes when the regulation is issued in final form. Additional clarifications to address issues that may arise under these regulations could also be published by the Departments in an on-going manner through administrative guidance other than in the form of a regulation. The grandfather rule does state that any changes that are made after it is published will only apply prospectively. 

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People have grown increasingly frustrated by a lack of control over their own health care insurance. During the past decade, the cost of coverage has climbed more than three times faster than the average hourly wages of Americans. The Affordable Care Act makes important changes to our health insurance system to put patients back in charge of their coverage. In 2019, health spending per insured person is estimated to be about $16,800 without reform. With reform, that number decreases about 10% to a little over $15,000. The grandfather rule is designed to strike a balance between allowing existing health plans to make routine changes and preventing plans from making such large changes that they are no longer the plans people once had and liked. As such, they will ease the transition that the nation's health care and health insurance industries must make to comply with the reforms of the Affordable Care Act.

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