WASHINGTON – Consumer Watchdog, a non-partisan consumer advocacy group, has called on the administration of President Barack Obama to make health reform waivers "the exception, not the rule."
Consumer Watchdog's complaint came as the Department of Health and Human Services announced 111 waivers in March, bringing the number of organizations with waivers up to 1,004.
HHS said the waivers granted so far protect 2.1 million enrollees, representing only about 1 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance.
Consumer Watchdog has expressed its opposition to a waiver granted to Anthem, saying the health plan is using the waiver as an attempt to evade medical spending rules in New Hampshire.
As part of that waiver application, the group said, Anthem should have been required to prove it had tried to shrink its administrative costs.
"It is not your job to preserve the status quo for companies as they operate in the market today," Consumer Watchdog wrote to HHS. "The standard for granting a state waiver should be whether consumers will be able to access insurance when the rules are implemented, not whether they will cause a shift in the market as more efficient insurers increase their business and more wasteful insurers clean up their act."
Under the Affordable Care Act, in 2011 most health plans can impose an annual limit of no less than $750,000. However, some workers are only offered "mini-med" health plans, with limits below those allowed by ACA. According to HHS, the waiver provision is designed to temporarily protect those workers until 2014, when the ACA puts an end to mini-med plans.
The GOP has turned up the heat on the waiver issue, among its arsenal of attacks on the Affordable Care Act.
The House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee held a March hearing to examine the need for waivers under the ACA. Subcommittee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said it "has become abundantly clear" over the past year that companies are having trouble complying with the new law.
A witness at the hearing, Edmund F. Haislmaier, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Center for Health Policy Studies, said the waiver program creates the opportunity – and the temptation – for administration officials to apply the law corruptly or engage in political favoritism.