The administration seems to have been wrong about a key aspect of new health-care reforms signed into law on Tuesday.

In multiple speeches in support of health-care reform, the president suggested that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) would immediately prevent children from being barred by insurance companies for preexisting conditions. But it is unclear that is the case:

Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, another panel that authored the legislation. That’s the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.
Obama’s public statements conveyed the impression that the new protections for kids were sweeping and straightforward.
“This is a patient’s bill of rights on steroids,” the president said Friday at George Mason University in Virginia. “Starting this year, thousands of uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions will be able to purchase health insurance, some for the very first time. Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.”
And Saturday, addressing House Democrats as they approached a make-or-break vote on the bill, Obama said: “This year … parents who are worried about getting coverage for their children with pre-existing conditions now are assured that insurance companies have to give them coverage — this year.”

Insurance groups say the relevant legislative language is difficult to parse, and the administration says Health & Human Services will issue new “regulations” in an attempt to clarify the issue.

Pass the bill to find out what’s in it, indeed.