Health care reform fixes for pre-existing conditions, high premiums to go into effect

In health care reform news, today is the deadline for states to tell Health and Human Services whether they want to run their own high-risk insurance pools or let the federal government establish a program in the state. There’s $5 billion in federal funding for the programs, which would help people with pre-existing conditions get coverage.

At a teleconference today, lawmakers and healthcare advocates looked at other aspects of the law that will soon take effect, including what’s called medical loss ratio, or how much insurance companies spend on services.

Under the law, companies must bring medical loss ratio up to 85 percent or rebate the difference to enrollees. Democratic Senator Al Franken says that’s a big jump from the previous low of 30 percent.

"Medical loss ratio is a strong way of limiting insurers profits, putting the brakes on skyrocketing premiums and reinforcing the idea that a health insurer should focus on, guess what, health care."

Meanwhile, Represenative Jan Schakowsky introduced a bill along with Senator Diane Feinstein, that would give authority to HHS to stop or change insurance rate increases that are considered unreasonable.

"Now premium increases are going to be exposed by having to post them online and requires justification for rate increases before they go into effect.”

Schakowsky pointed to the giant insurance company Wellpoint, which just posted first quarter profits of $877 million dollars, an increase over the same period last year.

Wellpoint said earlier this week that customers will no longer risk losing their coverage if they become sick, a pratice known as "rescissions." The industry-wide ban will go into effect in May.