Ky. Lawmakers Create Small Group Subsidy

By Staff Writer

July 14, 2006 at 03:11 PM

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The Kentucky Office of Insurance has published a summary of newly enacted bills that will affect Bluegrass State insurers.

Outside of Kentucky, the bill with the biggest effect is H.B. 112, the bill that gave Kentucky insurance regulators the authority to enroll the state in the new Interstate Insurance Product Regulation Compact. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Kansas City, Mo., set up the compact to create a single office that can accept product and rate filings for many different states.

Inside Kentucky, the bill with the biggest effect might be H.B. 380, which will create the Insurance Coverage Affordability and Relief to Small Employers program, a 4-year test program which will provide health coverage subsidies of $40 per employee per month for eligible, uninsured employers with 2 to 25 employees.

The program will be provide subsidies of $60 per month for participating small employers which have at least one employees who suffers from a "high-cost condition."

H.B. 380 includes another section that would encourage state officials to set up an Interstate Reciprocal Health Benefit Plan Compact. If created, the compact would handle health benefit plan product and rate approval for Kentucky and neighboring states, according to the bill text.

Another enacted bill, S.B. 107, will let life insurance agents who have held their licenses for at least 12 months to act as viatical settlement brokers without receiving separate viatical settlement licenses.

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