California Insurance Commissioner David Jones has pointed out that state Assembly Bill 999 — a long-term care insurance (LTCI) rate bill — is still alive.
Lawmakers have not acted on the bill in a visible way in almost a year, but it has passed out of the Assembly and into the Senate, and the Senate could take it up later this year, Jones says.
Jones talks about A.B. 999 in a press release hailing bills he supports that have moved ahead in the California Legislature.
Jones “remains strongly committed” to A.B. 999, which is “in [its] second house” and “can be acted on later this year,” officials in Jones’ office say in the release.
A.B. 999, a bill introduced by Assemblymember Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, Calif., would limit insurers to increasing rates on LTCI policies in place before 2000 to once every 5 years, and to increasing rates on LTCI policies issued later to once every 10 years.
An insurer could not use a change in investment yields to justify an LTCI rate increase unless the insurer could show that the return was lower than the maximum valuation interest rate for contract reserves for the policies or the insurance commissioner found that a change had resulted from changes in laws or regulations with a retroactive effect, according to California Senate legislative analysts.