State insurance regulators are talking about how they should rewrite a sample law that shapes some of the hottest health insurance products on the market today.
The document, the Minimum Standards for Accident and Sickness Insurance Model Act, gives states a sample they can use when setting rules for health insurance products other than major medical insurance.
The act affects products such as disability insurance, cancer insurance, critical illness insurance, hospital indemnity insurance and dental insurance. Federal regulators have classified many of these products as "excepted benefits" — products not governed by the provisions in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that apply to major medical coverage.
Because those products are PPACA-free products, they are also the products many agents and brokers who have been selling major medical coverage are trying to emphasize, in light of all of the new red tape now associated with selling major medical coverage.
Officials at the Regulatory Framework Task Force — part of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), an organization for state insurance regulators — are looking to see what, if any, parts of the model act they should change to reflect all of the new PPACA rules and programs.
Consumer groups have been skeptical of many of the non-medical health products, such as cancer insurance, for decades, and the new regulatory debate is giving them and America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) a chance to open up old wounds and pour acid in.
Here's how some of the proposals that have been discussed could increase the acid levels in your digestive tract.
1. You could have to provide a PPACA Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) for non-medical health products.
Some consumer groups like the idea. AHIP says the coverage outline sellers already works fine, and that adding an SBC requirement would add new administrative burdens.
