Health Policy Watchers Wonder About the Gap Fillers

Some presenters at the Society of Actuaries’ (SOAs’) latest health meeting were wondering whether Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) health insurance requirements could end up affecting products other than traditional major medical coverage.

The presenters, who went to Boston to present a session on the worksite insurance market for the SOA, Schaumburg, Ill., reported that some are asking whether the PPACA provision requiring health insurers to sell health insurance on a guaranteed issue basis could be applied to individual critical illness and cancer insurance policies sold through the worksite and voluntary group critical illness and cancer insurance policies.

PPACA includes exemptions for supplementary insurance products, but it makes no clear distinctions between individual products sold at the worksite and group products, the presenters said, according to a written version of their presentation posted on the SOA, at http://www.soa.org.