Legislature will review any new health rules from insurance commissioner

If Washington’s insurance commissioner wants to create new health insurance regulations, he will have to run them by a pair of legislative committees first.

Washington’s Senate passed 35-14 Tuesday a heavily changed bill that would require the Office of the Insurance Commissioner to run any new health insurance rules by the health care committees of the House and Senate. If either of those committees objects to the proposed regulation, an administrative procedure would resolve the conflict.

This requirement does not apply to new regulations for other types of insurance. The bill now goes to Gov. Jay Inslee.