The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires carriers to spend a specified proportion of the premium dollars they take in on medical care and health quality efforts. That’s the law. As I’ve noted previously, legislation creates a framework. It’s the regulations and day-to-day interpretations of the law that determines its impact. There are lots of opportunity for regulators to soften the edges of the law or sharpen them up.
- How should the law be applied to small or new carriers who may be subject to extreme fluctuations in their spending ratios that are beyond their control?
- How should nurses hotlines be treated?
- Should health quality efforts be considered non-administrative expenses only if they actually improve quality? And if so, what will that do to innovation?
- How should commissions and other fees received by carriers but passed-through entirely to independent third-parties be treated?
- At what level should carriers be required to meet the medical loss ratio requirements (i.e., state level? nationally?)
And the list goes on.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, working with the Department of Health and Human Services is tasked with resolving these issues. The NAIC provided some meaningful clarity last week when it published draft rules for how carriers were to calculate their medical loss ratios. But there are still many issues that are far from being settled. The Hill reported that Brian Webb of the NAIC outlined a host of MLR-related regulations the Commissioners are still considering during a presentation he made to the Congressional health Care Caucus.
What’s significant about what Mr. Webb had to say is not just the long list of rules being modified at this late date (the MLR requirements take effect January 1, 2011, so settling on how this provision is to be interpreted is of urgent concern), but his description of how the process of resolving these issues will play out. He indicated that an NAIC panel is expected to adopt the draft regulations on Monday, October 4th. That will no doubt be widely reported. But what will be important for those concerned about the nitty-gritty of the MLR rules to remember is his prediction that the regulations are likely to change before the full NAIC adopts the them in mid-October.
And this vote by the NAIC is unlikely to be the last word. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has to “certify” the regulations, which gives the Obama Administration an opportunity to tweak elements. Then each state has to adopt its own regulations. And while the NAIC proposal will carry great weight, states will have flexibility to adjust elements of the MLR calculation to suit their own health insurance market — and political — environments.
The Hill also reports that the NAIC will urge Secretary Sebelius to allow, on a state-by-state basis, a transition period phasing in the medical loss ratio targets as it applies to plans sold to individuals and families (non-group plans). Such an exemption would not be automatic and states would need to demonstrate that applying the 80 percent MLR on individual plans in their jurisdiction, as is required by the PPACA, would “destabilize the state’s individual market.” According to Mr. Webb, a similar transition mechanism could be established for the small group market as well.
This ongoing uncertainty will have serious consequences. Carriers will make decisions based on the best guess each makes on where the regulations will wind up (and that best guess will no doubt assume the worst possible outcome). As the regulations get clarified the carriers may seek to adjust some of those decisions creating a ripple effect of change. All of which means consumers, employer and the brokers who serve them are going to be kept busy adjusting to an evolving marketplace well beyond the effective date of the new health care reform’s medical loss ratio provisions.