The American Academy of Actuaries said the legislative efforts to strip away the antitrust exemption for medical professional liability insurers “could preclude data collection and aggregation across companies, limiting competition, and potentially increasing premiums.”In a statement, the actuaries said they “urged policymakers to discontinue efforts to advance the repeal provision.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2009 that
America's Health Insurance Plans, the health-insurance industry's trade group, said insurance is heavily regulated by the states, where antitrust laws mirror federal rules prohibiting price-fixing and collusion. "Insurers are only exempt from federal laws if there are state laws. We are not letting anyone off the hook here," said William Schiffbauer, a health-insurance-regulation lawyer who consults for AHIP, among others.
Robert Zirkelbach, an AHIP spokesman, said the group is specifically concerned about the fate of projects like one it recently introduced in Ohio where eight insurers collaborated to set up a new portal that doctors can use to file claims.
Tomorrow, the Office of Management and Budget releases the President's proposed fiscal year 2011 budget. I will be interested to review the FEHBP provisions.
On Friday, the Department Health and Human Services, along with its fellow regulatory agencies, the Labor Department, and the Internal Revenue Service, released interim final rules implementing the 2008 Wellstone Domenici mental health parity act, which became applicable to the FEHB Program on January 1, 2010. Because the regulations include several expansive interpretations of the new law, its changes take effect on January 1, 2011, for the FEHB Program. The regulation, which will be published on Tuesday, February 2, will be open for public comment for ninety days from that date.
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