Insurance Industry Agrees To Close Child Coverage Loophole

[laughingliberal]

WASHINGTON � After battling President Barack Obama's health care overhaul the better part of a year, the insurance industry said Monday it won't try to block his efforts to fix a potentially embarrassing glitch in the new law.

In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the industry's top lobbyist said insurers will accept new regulations to dispel uncertainty over a much-publicized guarantee that children with medical problems can get coverage starting this year.

Quick resolution of the doubts was a win for Obama – and a sign that the industry has no stomach for another war of words with a president who deftly used double-digit rate hikes by the companies to revive his sweeping health care legislation from near collapse in Congress.

"Health plans recognize the significant hardship that a family faces when they are unable to obtain coverage for a child with a pre-existing condition," Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, said in a letter to Sebelius. Ignagni said that the industry will "fully comply" with the regulations, expected within weeks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/30/insurance-industry-agrees_n_518033.html

This would appear to be good news and a win. We'll see what the regulation, once it's written, says. I still see a problem with guaranteed issue. The article goes on to say the child can not be denied access to the parents' coverage and their condition can not be excluded from coverage under that policy. Is there some way they can be forced to sell any family who has a child with a preexisting condition a policy? What I see is a child's preexisting condition can not be used to deny a policy to a family. That same family may still be turned down for a variety of other reasons like any preexisting conditions of the parents. Will they force the company to sell a policy to the family and allow them to exclude the any preexisting conditions the adults might have? At any rate, there are no premium price controls at this point. So, pricing them out of the market will be the bugaboo for everyone in the individual markets until guaranteed issue and the subsidies kick in 4 years from now. The bill has passed. Let's try to get as much reform as we can into it before we are all forced to hand money over to these vultures.

[ShortnFiery]

1. Yes! "Check's in the mail!"

:rofl: