With the Senate expected to pass the legislation Wednesday, House members will stay in town for the vote.

Health insurance increases greater than 10 percent will be scrutinized by the states and feds under a proposed HHS rule.

Federal regulators will need to flesh out more details on how states should set up acceptable processes to review unreasonable health insurance premium hikes, a National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) official said Tuesday.

The Health and Human Services Department released proposed regulations Tuesday morning requiring health insurers to justify double-digit rate increases. States will conduct the review process, though HHS will intervene if it determines the state does not have an “effective” review process in place.

The proposed rule describes four criteria for an effective review process, but NAIC past president Sandy Praeger said the organization will work with HHS to develop clearer guidance.

“We’ll know at some point in the future,” said Praeger, who is now insurance commissioner of Kansas. “There may be some additional guidance from HHS about what they want states to be doing, and I think that’s an ongoing process.”

HHS officials stressed Tuesday morning that they want states to handle rate reviews. The healthcare reform law, which required the reviews, will provide $250 million to help states bolster insurance rate oversight.

Praeger said that states lacking effective rate reviews will work quickly over the next few years to improve their systems.

“It’s the lesser of two evils,” she said. “They’d rather file with the state regulator than have to go to HHS.”

The HHS proposal requires "unreasonable" rate reviews for insurers in the small-group or individual market, but Praeger did not rule out that the large-group market will be included in the future

“The real issue is the individual or small-group market,” she said. “That’s where you have more rate volatility.”

The tortuous journey of a bill overhauling the nation’s food safety oversight is one step closer to conclusion, after the House voted on Tuesday afternoon — for the third time — to approve the measure.

The bill passed mostly along party lines, 215-144, marking another win for Democrats in the lame-duck session, even though the bill was dead in the water last weekend despite passing both chambers earlier this year.

A more liberal version of the bill passed the House in July 2009, but the Senate did not approve its own version until the start of the lame-duck session in November. However, a technical error voided the bill, and the legislation had to start over again in the House.

Fearing that Senate Republicans would filibuster any bill not related to tax cuts and government spending, House leaders tucked the Senate food safety bill into a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded. The CR narrowly passed the House, but the Senate scrapped it after it became clear Republicans wouldn’t support it.

Without an obvious vehicle for passing food safety, the bill’s chances in the lame-duck session seemed slim. However, in a surprise move, the Senate approved the food safety bill by voice vote Sunday night, and the House gave its final approval Tuesday afternoon.

President Obama presumably will sign the bill, which will give the Food and Drug Administration power to recall tainted food, quarantine geographical areas and access food producers' records.

The bill's passage comes one week after a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report said one in six Americans gets sick from foodborne illness each year, and 3,000 people die each year as a result.

Majority leader says House Democrats should have moved more quickly to pass healthcare reform after bipartisan talks stalled.

A California-based consumer advocacy group said Tuesday that federal regulations on health insurance rates should be "strengthened" to "prevent insurers from imposing unreasonable premium increases on consumers."

The regulations implement a provision of Democrats' healthcare reform that requires health plans to justify "unreasonable" rate increases. Proposed regulations unveiled Tuesday define as unreasonable annual hikes of 10 percent or more, and set up a mechanism for federal regulators to take over the review process if states fall down on the job.

That proposal doesn't go far enough, said Carmen Balber of Consumer Watchdog, and states should pass legislation enabling them to modify or deny rates deemed excessive. In Congress, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced legislation earlier this year that would give federal regulators the power to reject "unreasonable" rate hikes, but her bill went nowhere.

Tuesday's regulations give regulators a "bully pulpit" to shame insurers into offering lower rates, Balber said, but "at the end of the day consumers will not be protected unless regulators also have the authority to reject unreasonable rates."

Read more...

The legislation, which provides healthcare services for Ground Zero rescue workers, has faced a steep climb in the Senate.

The U.S. teen birth rate fell in 2009 to the lowest rate in 70 years, according to a federal report released Tuesday morning.

The 2009 rate of 39.1 births per 1,000 teens is down 6 percent from the previous year, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) said. Birth rates for younger and older teens, including all races and ethnic groups, also reached record lows.

Total births dropped from 4.25 million in 2008 to 4.13 million in 2009, the NCHS said. The report also found that the birth rate for women in their early 20s fell 7 percent last year, the largest decline since 1973.

Meanwhile, the cesarean delivery rate rose to a record high of 32.9 percent. The rate has increased each year since 1996, when it was 20.7 percent.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy welcomed the news but said the U.S. rate is still high.

"Even when the news is good, it is essential that parents, practitioners, policymakers, and really anyone who cares about teenagers, remember that the U.S. still has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and births among comparable countries and that we all need to continue helping teens postpone their families until they are older, through school, and in stable, committed relationships," the organization said.

A new federal regulation issued Tuesday defines “unreasonable” health insurance premiums under the healthcare reform law.