Regulatory Updates
 The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) solicited comments from the public on April 12 on Section 1003 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P. L. 111-148), which requires the HHS secretary to work with states to establish an annual review of unreasonable rate increases, to monitor premium increases, and to award grants to states to carry out their rate review process. Comments should be submitted within 30 days of the April 14 Federal Register notice.
Also on April 12, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), and HHS issued a request for comments on medical loss ratios. Section 2718 of the Public Health Service Act requires health insurance issuers offering individual or group coverage to submit annual reports to the HHS secretary on the percentages of premiums that the coverage spends on reimbursement for clinical services and activities that improve health care quality. The law requires insurers to provide rebates to enrollees if this spending does not meet minimum standards for a given plan year. Comments should be submitted by May 14.
The Health Care Reform Solvency Impact Subgroup of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' (NAIC) Financial Condition Committee held a conference call on April
15 to assess the concerns of health insurers, including the impact on solvency, as a result of the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The NAIC subgroup addressed crafting definitions for the numerator and denominator for the medical loss ratio for HHS, establishing an emergency blanks proposal to collect specific health data from all health carriers based on common definitions and reporting breakouts, and aiding the NAIC's Accident and Health Working Group in establishing rate filing guidelines.
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