Have questions about your health plan? Soon all you’ll have todo is check a label.

The Affordable Care Act requires that health insurance providersmake “coverage facts labels” available so that consumers canclearly understand what they’re getting with their health plan. Itwill have pricing information to compare health insurancepolicies.

But it’s not as simple as your typical label—the health insurance label will be at least two pages long. A newsummary of benefits form, which insurers will use to explain whatservices their policies cover, is also required.

Last week, the group working to draft the overage labels agreedto seek public comment on the drafts and conduct consumer focustesting for additional feedback before presenting them to stateinsurance commissioners. The health care bill had directed theNational Association of Insurance Commissioners to draft them, butthe association gave that job to a working group made up of stateinsurance regulators, industry representatives and consumeradvocates.

Once approved, the labels will be sent to federal officials whowill consider implementing them for insurance companies. The labelsand benefit summaries are supposed to take effect next year.

To begin with, three medical scenarios will be listed oncoverage labels: maternity care, treatment for diabetes and breastcancer.

Because medical costs vary widely across the country and amongproviders, and the treatment regimen may also depend on individualproviders, the working group opted to use national average pricesfor the standard treatment regimen on the labels. The labelsthen break down how a policy would apportion those costs.

For the breast cancer example, insurers will have to list howmuch patients would pay – based on the national average price—foreverything from surgery, lab tests, office visits, chemotherapy andradiation treatment to prescription drugs, a wig and mental healthcounseling. If a plan offers no maternity coverage, the labelwill show that the patient is responsible for paying the entirecost.

The labels are supposed to make it easy for consumers, but it’snot that easy for the group drafting the labels.

“We want there to be as much information in the hands ofconsumers as possible,” Susan Pisano, told Kaiser Health News. But Pisano, a spokeswoman forAmerica’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group that will beconducting consumer focus group testing later this month, also saidthey “want to make sure that the information is valuable from theirperspective.”

A big concern is that labels may be confusing to consumers byproviding cost examples that will vary significantly from theiractual costs. Since the labels will be produced based oninformation provided by HHS, they won't indicate differencesin cost sharing “due to variation in the insurer’s contracted rateswith physicians and hospitals, cost differentials due to geographicvariation, variation in policies used to reimburse providers andinsurer programs to help consumers manage their medical conditionand treatment,” according to a letter sent by Joy Higa ofUnitedHealth Group to the NAIC.

Additionally, there is still a lot of information and the groupmust be careful about the language they chose.