The Public Option Threat Still Buried in the Senate Bill

Conn Carroll / February 04, 2010

Most Americans now believe that major health care legislation will not pass this year. But as Heritage Vice President Stuart Butler explains in The New England Journal Medicine one seemingly minor proposal in the Senate health care bill could end up having huge repercussions for our entire health care system:

The Senate legislation contains strong directives to the OPM, requiring it to negotiate medical-loss ratios (the percentage of premiums that insurers actually spend on medical care for enrollees), minimum benefits, profit margins, premiums, and “such other terms and conditions of coverage as are in the interests of enrollees in such plans.” Crucially, the legislation also specifies that the OPM-administered plans would automatically be deemed to meet all the requirements for plans to be offered through the health exchanges created by the legislation.1 This means that OPM-administered plans could in practice operate free of many of the financial regulations that exchanges might impose on other plans, allowing the plans to operate under their own OPM-designed regulations. (more…)