HR3590 Health Care Bill & Government Health Insurance

A feature on the Los Angeles Times shared that state insurance regulators were given $1 million in grants to be used towards beefing up oversight on rising health care insurance premiums.

The grants were announced on Monday and were sent to all but five states, according to the report. This funding can be used by the recipient states to expand public access to information regarding increases in health care premium rates, as well as to hire experts to review what insurers would like to charge consumers.

In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services revealed that more than a dozen states would like to ask for additional authority to prevent insurance premium increases that they determine to be unjustified. The feature shared that less than half of state commissioners have the power to review the records of insurance companies and block proposed increases in premium rates.

The authority to conduct a full rate review is a provision that the Obama administration and consumer advocates wanted to include in the new health care reform law. However, they were blocked from doing so in the final legislation, so the administration has encouraged state leaders to try and secure the authority on their own.

Among the states with minimal oversight who are pushing forward with getting full rate review authority are Alabama, Illinois, Montana and Louisiana.  The states that did not receive grants, mainly because they did not ask for them, are Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota and Wyoming.

However, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – who once served as the insurance commissioner of Kansas – said that the administration will continue to work with states to strengthen their oversight of health care premiums, regardless of whether they applied for grants or not.