The head of the Self-Insurance Institute of America went to Capitol Hill Wednesday to try to keep the Obama administration from applying new limits on medical stop-loss insurance.
SIIA President Michael Ferguson testified at a House Education & Workforce health subcommittee hearing on self-insurance in favor of H.R. 3462, the "Self-Insurance Protection Act" bill.
The bill would exclude stop-loss insurance from the federal definition of "health insurance coverage" given in the Public Health Services Act, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and the Internal Revenue Code, Ferguson said.
The bill "would, basically, set some guard rails around the self-insurance marketplace," to protect it against new federal regulatory restrictions, Ferguson said.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act exempts self-insured plans from some of the new insurance rules that apply to insured group health programs.
Employers with self-insured plans can use stop-loss programs — insurance for insurance plans — to limit their losses. Some PPACA supporters have argued that very small employers that have not traditionally used stop-loss arrangements might use stop-loss coverage with unusually low "attachment points," or stop-loss deductibles, as a substitute for fully insured coverage.
