Whether you need healthcare coverage or already have healthcare coverage, the Affordable Care Act offers new rights and protections that make coverage fairer and easier to understand:

• Creates the Health Insurance Marketplace, , a new way for individuals, families, and small businesses to get health coverage
• Requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing health conditions
• Helps you understand the coverage you’re getting
• Holds insurance companies accountable for rate increases
• Protects your choice of doctors
• Covers young adults under 26
• Provides free preventive care
• Makes it illegal for health insurance companies to arbitrarily cancel your health insurance just because you get sick
• Ends lifetime and yearly dollar limits on coverage of essential health benefits

Some rights and protections apply to plans in the healthcare marketplace, other individual insurance, employer-based plans, and/or all healthcare coverage.