... Insurance Commissioners at their 2010 Fall National Meeting at the wealthy Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando, Florida.
Tracking down the National Association of Insurance Commissioners yesterday on how they adjusted the "MLR" was not an easy task. Their "media availability" (read: Press Conference) was scheduled for Noon. When I, a very new News Media badgeholder, showed up a few minutes before Noon, the Press Conference was already over. I asked several people for a copy of the Commissioners' decision, or at least a copy of the model regulation that they voted on. No-one there could provide either one. It seems that at Noon, the NAIC members and their staff were on their way out of town, for the most part. A few intrepid Insurance Commissioners remained for awhile, for example to see and hear the doings at the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation's Public Symposium on Hurricane/Catastrophe Insurance (to be posted in the future in a separate post).
There was not so much as a Press Release available from the NAIC yesterday, Thursday, October 21, 2010 in Orlando where they were meeting. Here is a copy they posted, under yesterday's date, on their controlled website. As you can see, it does not say much about what the NAIC voted to include in or exclude from "Medical Loss Ratio Regulations".
Here is a newspaper report published in print today, Friday, October 22, 2010 and Online yesterday by the Orlando Sentinel, carried in other Tribune-owned newspapers, reported by Linda Shrieves, "State Insurer Group Backs Proposed Rule" p. B7, col. 1 (Orlando Sentinel, Friday, October 22, 2010).
The report appears to make it look like the NAIC courageously required Health Insurance Companies to "spend at least 80 percent of a customer's premium on providing health care and medicines." However, the NAIC did not do that; Congress did, when Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act earlier this year.
The linked report parenthetically also makes it appear that the president of America's Health Insurance Plans ("AHIP") appeared in person at the Gaylord Palms to object to this requirement, but that person is not to be found on the list of attendees, although other representatives of AHIP did attend and make themselves heard.
So, it's back to Washington, D.C. for anyone who wants to continue to try to keep track of the MLR and what if anything is being done to or about it.
The author is Co-Chair of the Health, Life and Disability Subcommittee of the American Bar Association's Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee.
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