The House Health Bill: Federal Control Over Americans’ Insurance

Edmund Haislmaier / October 30, 2009

The House health bill (H.R. 3962) creates a new minimum federal standard benefit package that will eventually apply to nearly all health plans, and establishes a new “Health Benefits Advisory Committee”. The Committee, housed within HHS, will make detailed recommendations, which the Secretary of HHS would then impose on all private insurers and employers through regulation.

HHS would have broad, permanent authority to continually update and expand the federal benefit requirements for all private health insurance and could regulate not only specific items and services than must be covered but also the minimum frequency or duration of a required covered service and the maximum allowable patient cost sharing.

All existing employment-based health insurance coverage would have to be modified or replaced to meet the new federal benefit package by 2018. Starting in 2013, all new individual or employment-based coverage would have to conform to the federal minimum benefit rules. (more…)