Part Three – Bona Fide Associations…still waiting

Four years ago in an article posted here, I wrote the following:

I don’t know yet what will happen in the association plan market or how the battle over sick kids will play out. I can only wait for HHS and the Insurance Commissioner to provide direction. While I wait and reflect on Samuel Beckett’s more famous play, Waiting for Godot, I consider my belt and its length and strength. [10/18/2010]

Since then many trade association plans closed their doors and turned away employers who had been insured through group health plans offered through the association. In the drip, drip, drip of regulatory change, inaction, misdirection, and abrupt changes in course, we continue to wait in line at the Insurance Commissioner’s Office. Following a new strategy of regulatory torpor may resolve the regulatory backlog as licensees die of acute boredom and ennui.

Clients continue to ask “are we there yet” to which I am left to reply, “don’t make me come back there!”

And to those who niggle over regulatory matters like transparency, certainty, and equal application of law, please give it a rest. Take your ticket and wait in line for your particular unique, off the record ruling like everyone else.

Here is an example of what I look at every day “Waiting for Godot” while perfectly nice people lose business and insurance producers snipe at each other. The following is just one of many pages listing the filing of association health plans with the Insurance Commissioner’s Office showing the date the insurer filed the plan and its current approval status. It must be hard to come down on both sides of an issue.

Please also note for those who keep asking, unlike most other plan filings, no the information is not available for public inspection. I am sure it will be some day.

The following can be found on the agency’s rate and form filing website here: