3/11/98: New report from the Government Accountability Office:
Health Insurance Standards: New Federal Law Creates Challenges for Consumers, Insurers, Regulators. HEHS-98-67. 30 pp. plus 6 appendices (18 pp.) February 25, 1998.
 PDF (Adobe Acrobat) version
 Text version
Excerpt:
In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act, considered by some to be the most
significant federal health insurance legislation in more than a
decade. The act guarantees people losing group health coverage,
through retirement or other termination of employment, continued
access to coverage in the individual market regardless of health
status. But consumers attempting to exercise
this right have been hindered by carrier practices and pricing
or by their own misunderstandings of the law. Many have had difficulty
obtaining individual market coverage with guaranteed access
rights or faced significantly higher premiums for such coverage;
some carriers charge premiums as much as 600 percent higher than
standard rates. Other consumers do not realize that the access
guarantee applies only to those losing group coverage who meet
other eligibility requirements. For example, an individual must
apply within 63 days of losing group coverage or the right to
coverage is lost. Insurers believe that the act poses an excessive
administrative burden, unanticipated consequences, and the
potential for consumer abuse. State insurance regulators have
encountered their own difficulties in attempting to implement and
enforce the act's provisions where they found federal guidance to
lack sufficient clarity or detail. Finally, federal regulators
face an unexpectedly large regulatory role under the act. In
states that have not yet passed legislation to implement the act,
the Health and Human Services Department must step in to perform
functions similar to those of a state insurance regulator, such
as approving insurance products and responding to consumer
complaints.
Important word about authorship:
BenefitsLink ® (BenefitsLink.com) provides this page for you,
with a hypertext link to an item we think is interesting and valuable
for companies sponsoring employee benefit plans, employees who participate in plans,
and firms who provide products and services to plans. But BenefitsLink
is not the author of the item to which this hypertext link
will take you (unless expressly indicated there).
|
|
