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December 24, 2015 at 05:53 AM
A group of state insurance regulators is pleading with federal agencies to let the standard “nutrition label for health plans” grow a little.
The Consumer Information Subgroup, part of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), is pushing for looser length limits in a letter about Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) notice rules.
Federal agencies are trying to get a new, easier-to-understand SBC ready for 2017, and they agreed to let the NAIC draft a new SBC and put the revisions through a consumer testing process.
The Consumer Information Subgroup sent the agencies an SBC template, or blank SBC form, which takes up 2.5 sheets of standard U.S. typing paper in October. The federal agencies told the subgroup it thinks the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) requires the template to fill up just two sheets of typing paper.
See also: Reality collides with PPACA benefits summary length limit
The subgroup came up with a shortened version of its template, but Angela Nelson, chair of the subgroup, has written to the agencies to say the subgroup hates the shortened version of the template.
“The requested truncated template has not been consumer tested and, outside of meeting an arbitrary and ill-founded interpretation of a statutory requirement, serves no other purpose,” Nelson writes in a memo addressed to PPACA implementers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Labor Department and the U.S. Treasury Department.
“The subgroup believes the requested truncated template will be infinitely more confusing and less useful to consumers, and definitely runs counter to the letter and spirit of the ACA,” Nelson says.
