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August 14, 2012 at 09:12 AM
The NAIC has formed a new working group comprised of state insurance commissioners in order to create a forum for the many states that, yielding to political gubernatorial pressure or for other reasons, are not adhering to the formal state health care exchange implementation path outlined in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
The group was organized on August 13 at the NAIC’s National Summer Meeting in Atlanta.
Michael Consedine, Pennsylvania’s insurance commissioner, stated that the group is “not a forum to throw grenades at ‘Obamacare.’”
Many of the commissioners present, though, come from states that have been hostile to many elements of PPACA and its statutory deadlines that are required if states want to control their health care exchanges.
The new group, the Health Care Reform Regulatory Alternatives (B) Working Group, vice-chaired by Wisconsin Commissioner Ted Nickel, addresses the concerns of the many states who are expected to have the federal government work in concert or in full with them to create the PPACA-mandated health care exchanges.
Consedine noted that there is a need for the group, as more than half of the states have chosen a different route in dealing with PPACA, which includes, for states, implementing state health care exchanges and addressing Medicare expansion funding.
One of the charges is to “identify opportunities for members to continue to innovate and regulate outside of a federal exchange.”
