On Monday (5/18), the OIC added new documents to defend its disapproval of the Washington Counties Insurance Fund (WCIF) health plan rates. In a declaration from staff counsel, the OIC supplied two letters – one from the state Attorney General’s office and one from Teresa Miller from HHS overseeing health plan market reforms. Both documents…
Yikes! The number of lawyers and powerful law firms arguing for association health plan clients continue to swamp the Insurance Commissioner’s Office (OIC). Legal pleadings related to association health plans pour into Olympia at a fairly quick pace now. On May 6th, Stoel Rives, Perkins Coie, and Kutscher, Hereford, etc. filed a summary judgment motion on behalf of…
On April 29th, the Washington Insurance Commissioner (OIC) responded to the Washington Counties Insurance Fund (WCIF) challenge of the OIC’s disapproval of the WCIF 2014 health plans. Although WCIF qualifies as a bona fide association (so says the Commissioner), the rates filed with the agency violated the law as the OIC understands it by establishing…
“Coverage that would be regulated as small group market coverage … if it were not sold through an association is subject to rate review as small group market coverage.” With that single sentence, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services amended its recently adopted health plan rate regulations and preempted Washington State statutes and…
Washington State has regulated association health plans as large group plans for nearly 15 years. Washington State carved out a unique position in the health insurance market for trade associations back in 1995. An example of this carve-out originating when the state’s 1993 health care reform act was dismantled provides: Employers purchasing health plans provided…
I am just as good a basketball player as President Barack Obama. I make that judgment the same way we measure the fairness of health insurance prices. I judge my skill in relation to myself – mid-fifties, overweight, lost a step, and down from six foot to five-eleven. Regulators judge insurance premiums in relation to…
