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Liberal group requests public hearing into Florida’s request for healthcare law waiver
The liberal group Health Care for America Now is asking federal regulators to hold a hearing on Florida's request for a waiver from the healthcare reform law.
HCAN says the Sunshine State's request for a waiver from the law's medical loss ratio provision would deny Florida families $140 million in consumer rebates through 2013. The group is requesting that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) "conduct a public hearing to finally allow testimony from witnesses representing consumers to become part of the record."
"Due to the serious defects in the state's request and the significant consumer impact that would result if granted," HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome wrote to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, "we are writing to ask that HHS hold a public hearing to ensure that Florida's request receives the rigorous, open review it deserves."
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation held a public hearing on the medical loss ratio on Sept. 24, 2010, and used testimony from that hearing to buttress its waiver request. But Rome's letter argues that "event was not a public hearing in any sense of the term."
"It was held with less than one day's notice," Rome writes. "There was no 'unanimity of all interested parties' since consumers were not even allowed to speak. Four representatives of insurance companies and one representative of agents and brokers testified at the invitation of the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (FLOIR). No consumers were invited and the record was closed before the consumers who did attend were given the opportunity to speak."
Public comments on Florida's waiver request, as well as Michigan's, are due to HHS today.
