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August 22, 2010 at 08:00 PM
WASHINGTON BUREAU — The new minimum medical loss ratio (MLR) rules could be a little looser than some insurers had feared.
Senior Democrats in Congress are arguing that, when they wrote the minimum MLR section of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), they meant to put tight limits on the kinds of tax payments that insurers can subtract from “total premium” revenue.
But Beth Mantz-Steindecker, an analyst at Washington Analysis, Washington, and lawyers at O’Melveny & Myers L.L.P., a firm that is working with America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Washington, are predicting that Democratic leaders will have a tough time getting state and federal regulators to implement PPACA the way the Democratic leaders wish they had written the act, rather than how they actually wrote it.
State insurance regulators are creating the minimum MLR implementation rules, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services must approve the rules.
“Well-settled principles of statutory construction and longstanding Supreme Court precedent establish that the post-enactment interpretive opinions of several members of Congress cannot alter the meaning of an otherwise unambiguous statutory provision,” O’Melveny lawyers write in a legal letter written at the request of AHIP.
The Democratic leaders’ letter reflects “buyers’ remorse” about the minimum MLR provision and has no legal weight, Mantz-Steindecker says.
The final minimum MLR rules could hurt small insurers and regional insurers that serve the small group and individual markets, but large insurers should do well, Mantz-Steindecker says.
PPACA, part of the federal Affordable Care Act package, will require the MLR, or percentage of health coverage premium revenue spent on health care and quality improvement efforts, to be at least 80% for individual and small group health coverage and 85% for large group coverage.
Democratic leaders have written to state and federal regulators to discuss a provision in PPACA Section 2718 that deals with the health insurer premium revenue figure used in MLR calculations.
