Several state insurance regulators said “thanks but no thanks” to a planned meeting at the White House Wednesday afternoon with an association representing state insurance-department regulators to discuss difficulties carrying out President Barack Obama’s plan to allow a one-year extension of health insurance policies that were canceled because they don’t comply with the Affordable Care Act, people familiar with the matter said.
The regulators balked at attending, given how controversial the president’s health-care overhaul has become. Many states are still struggling to decide whether to support the president’s planned fix, which is aimed at quieting some of the outrage over cancellations of millions of policies that people had bought directly with insurers in past years but now don’t comply with the new health-care law.
Because the topic of the White House meeting with representatives of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners “is so delicate and potentially divisive among the nation’s insurance commissioners, a meaningful discussion between all the commissioners needs to take place before a meeting with the President,” Adam Hamm, North Dakota’s insurance commissioner and president-elect of the group, said in an email in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal about his decision not to be at the meeting.
“Unfortunately, that did not happen so I had to respectfully decline to participate in today’s meeting,” Mr. Hamm added.
His office provided a copy of a communication he and five other commissioners, who are either officers or past officers of the association, sent Tuesday to NAIC members to express concerns about the meeting. The other commissioners are from Florida, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
In the missive, they said “we have serious reservations about both the process and the policy issues surrounding such an important meeting.”
They said they didn’t think the meeting should take place until the members of the NAIC had “worked to build consensus among the members on what our positions will be at the meeting. As we all know, the NAIC is made up of a group of extremely knowledgeable insurance regulators with very diverse views on the Affordable Care Act.”
Scheduled to attend the meeting are NAIC president, James Donelon,who is insurance commissioner in Louisiana, a state with a Republican governor; Wayne Goodwin, insurance commissioner in GOP-led North Carolina and one of a small number of elected commissioners, and Thomas Leonardi, insurance commissioner in Democratic-led Connecticut.
A spokesman for the NAIC didn’t have immediate response Wednesday to a question about the internal debate.
Mr. Hamm and most of the co-authors of the Tuesday missive have yet to decide whether their states will support the president’s initiative and work with insurers to try to extend the policies that were scheduled to be canceled because they aren’t in compliance with the Affordable Care Act, which mandates certain benefits.
Many people who held the canceled policies, especially those who are healthy, are irate that their policies are being canceled for being out of compliance because the president had repeatedly promised that people who liked their policies could keep them.
Many healthy people who don’t qualify for subsidies will pay substantially more for policies that comply with the new law, even though many people don’t want the full package of benefits being offered (such as maternity care), and some of the new policies offer narrower networks of doctors and hospitals.
With just six more weeks left in the year, insurance commissioners in states where regulators have given the green-light face significant logistical challenges in making policy extensions happen. Consumer angst and confusion is widespread for millions of consumers whose policies were terminated.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/11/20/some-state-insurance-commissioners-turn-down-white-house-invitation/
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