The Affordable Care Act (ACA) applies a number of new market reforms/consumer protections to comprehensive major medical insurance. Some of these reforms took effect in September 2010 while others will begin to apply in 2014. Congress believed that these market reforms were necessary to provide consumers with health care packages that would meet their needs on a more complete basis than are available today. View a complete list of reforms.

Because stand-alone dental plans are so different from major medical insurance, they are considered excepted benefits, meaning they are exempt from the insurance market reforms established in the ACA.