The change is an unintended consequence of another measure - the freezing of the lifetime limit to £1.8m for high net worth individuals.
For high-income earners, a $500,000 lifetime limit to be placed on post-tax contributions to replace a much more generous annual limit of $180,000 (this measure has proven controversial, because it will be backdated to 2007).
As well as deferring the new regime's start date until April 2006, giving individuals and companies more time to plan their affairs, he has increased the starting level of the lifetime limit to £1.5m.
But perhaps this is the real dilemma for House Democrats: In 2009, 20,000 to 25,000 people lost health insurance because they exceeded their lifetime limits, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis.
WASHINGTON — All Americans would have access to "essential health care benefits," with no annual or lifetime limits, employers would have to contribute to the cost of coverage and the government would create a new public insurance program under sweeping legislation drafted by Senator Edward M. Kennedy and circulated Friday.
Lifetime-analysis was performed with a lifetime limit equal to 2, meaning that at least two subsequent structures of a cluster that differ from the cluster of interest have to occur in order to record a transition to a different cluster.
Exactly what will happen to the law's specific provisions that prevent insurers from imposing lifetime limits and require them to phase out the annual limits now in place is unclear.
The legislation put an end to lifetime limits on coverage for the first time, erasing the financial burdens, including personal bankruptcy, that had affected many ailing Americans.
In justifying rate increases sought in Connecticut, Anthem said that one provision of the new law, forbidding insurers to impose lifetime limits on coverage of "essential health benefits," could cause premiums for some policies to rise as much as 22.9 percent.
Insurers have already factored in the costs of allowing adults under 26 to be covered on their parents' plans and eliminating co-payments on preventive services, and companies are also unlikely to reimpose lifetime limits on coverage.
