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May 05, 2006 at 01:37 PM
Some members of the American Academy of Actuaries say S. 1955 should keep health carriers solvent but might not do much to lower overall small business health coverage prices.
The small business health plan bill, introduced by Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., would cut rates for some small groups but raise rates for others, and the care discounts that the SBHPs negotiate might not be much better than the discounts insurers already negotiate for small group plans, Karen Bender, chairperson of the AAA’s small-group market task force, and David Bahn, a member of the task force, write in a letter sent on behalf of the task force.
The authors addressed the letter to Senate Majority Leader William Frist, R-Tenn., and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Enzi is best known for promoting “association health plans,” or plans that would give small businesses the ability to team up to join the same kind of self-insured, multistate plans that now insure many employees at larger employers.
The AHP plans would be exempt from state insurance regulation.
The authors of the letter sent by the AAA, Washington, note that the SBHP proposal is different because SBHPs would have to buy insured health coverage from an insurer that would be supervised by regulators in the insurer’s state of domicile.
But S. 1955 also would create a federal regulatory system for the small-group health insurance market, and how that federal regulatory authority would apply to the individual health insurance market and to small-group markets in states that refuse to accept federal oversight is unclear, the actuaries write.
