President Donald Trump’s address to Congress embraced major GOP talking points on health care reform. One proposal receiving little notice is the idea of selling health insurance policies “across state lines” as a way to save premium costs. What does this really mean, since most health insurance companies are already multistate?
Currently, plans, whether employer-sponsored, purchased privately, or via the exchange, are regulated by state insurance commissions, since Congress has long resisted federal-level insurance regulation. In Colorado, important insurance-commission consumer protections include factoring claims history into allowable policy rates and allowing customers to appeal the all-too-common insurance practices of denial of claims and procedure approval to Colorado’s insurance commission.
These and other consumer protections would become nonexistent under the GOP’s “free market” proposals. Hundreds of thousands of Americans could quickly find themselves bankrupt after buying low-cost, lowest-common-denominator out-state plans with no effective recourse when problems occur.
Lavaun Abbott, Denver
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