Consumer protections
The Affordable Care Act [1] mandated certain requirements to extend protections to healthcare consumers. These protections include preventing insurers from denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions, phasing out lifetime caps on coverage, allowing children to stay on their parents plan up to the age of 26 and mandating coverage on 10 essential health benefits [2] like maternity and mental health coverage. A plan must meet these requirements to be compliant with the ACA, but non-ACA compliant plans may not provide some or all of these protections.