Insurance Commissioners Bow to Insurers, Consumers Face $1.2 Billion Bill
One of the Affordable Care Acts most important consumer protection provisions requires health insurers spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on actual medical care, not wasteful administration, marketing or executive pay and bonuses.
But yesterday, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) endorsed a Big Insurers-backed plan to weaken the law when its members voted to urge Congress and the Obama administration to exempt brokers’ fees from the calculation—known as medical loss ratios—used to determine a company’s premium total.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D. W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, says exempting those fees would allow insurance companies to retain billions of dollars that the health care reform law requires then to give back to consumers in the form of rebates or lower premiums. Click here for a letter Rockefeller sent to the NAIC prior to yesterday’s vote. Last year the NAIC defeated a similar effort. Read the rest of this entry »
New Health Care Rule: You Get More Care for Your Money
Big insurers spent millions to try to gut a proposed new rule that requires they spend a certain amount of premium dollars on actual medical care. But American families and businesses are coming out on top.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today issued a new rule—known as “medical loss ratio”—that will require health insurance companies to spend 80 percent to 85 percent of your health care insurance premiums on making you healthier instead of overhead costs like advertising or executive pay.
Last month, big insurers sent more than 1,000 executives and lobbyists to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) meeting in Orlando to try and get the rule changed, according to the coalition, Health Care for America Now (HCAN).
Failing to Kill Health Care Reform, Insurers Now Fight to Weaken It
After spending tens of millions of dollars trying to kill the new health care reform law, the nation’s big health insurance companies now, says Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), are:
sparing no expense to weaken this new law and the protection it promises to America’s consumers.
According to a new report by the coalition Health Care for America Now (HCAN), big insurers are trying to gut proposed new rules that require they spend a certain amount of premium dollars on actual medical care, not wasteful administration, marketing or executive pay and bonuses.
