Question

What do you know about the Sarbannes-Oxley and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act?

Answer 1

ANSWER

from U.S. law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Introduced in 1996,

and also to a set of standards and regulations passed later to implement the law. Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 required the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop regulations protecting the privacy and security of certain health information. To fulfill this requirement, HHS published what are commonly known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule and the HIPAA Security Rule. The Privacy Rule, or Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, establishes national standards for the protection of certain health information.

• Some health care plans are exempted from Title I requirements, such as long-term health plans and limited-scope plans like dental or vision plans offered separately from the general health plan. However, if such benefits are part of the general health plan, then HIPAA still applies to such benefits. For example, if the new plan offers dental benefits, then it must count creditable continuous coverage under the old health plan towards any of its exclusion periods for dental benefits.

• An alternate method of calculating creditable continuous coverage is available to the health plan under Title I. That is, 5 categories of health coverage can be considered separately, including dental and vision coverage. Anything not under those 5 categories must use the general calculation (e.g., the beneficiary may be counted with 18 months of general coverage, but only 6 months of dental coverage, because the beneficiary did not have a general health plan that covered dental until 6 months prior to the application date). Since limited-coverage plans are exempt from HIPAA requirements, the odd case exists in which the applicant to a general group health plan cannot obtain certificates of creditable continuous coverage for independent limited-scope plans, such as dental to apply towards exclusion periods of the new plan that does include those coverages.