Colo. bill would limit medical stop-loss sales to self-funded employers
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Legislation has been introduced in Colorado that would restrict some sales of medical stop-loss insurance to self-funded employers.
H.B. 13-1290, introduced in the state House of Representatives on April 2, establishes minimum specific stop-loss attachment points of $30,000, imposes new reporting requirements on stop-loss insurers and empowers the insurance commissioner to change attachment point requirements based on medical inflation data and adopt other rules “as necessary” for the administration of the law.
The bill has been assigned to the Health, Insurance and Environment Committee.
If passed, the measure also would require stop-loss insurers to provide the insurance commissioner with the following information about their self-insured clients on an annual basis:
• Breakdown of group sizes
• Number of covered lives for each group
• The mean and median attachment points for each group
• The source of prior health insurance coverage for each group.
Colorado was the fifth state to introduce legislation this year restricting the sale of stop-loss coverage to self-funded employers. Bills introduced earlier this year in Minnesota and Rhode Island have been shelved in response to opposition by businesses and industry stakeholders. Meanwhile, stop-loss legislation was enacted in Utah and remains pending in California.
The introduction of these bills shows that states are entertaining legislation that would make it harder for employers to self-insure their health benefits, with the intent of steering more lives into the federal and state health care exchanges slated to come online Jan. 1, 2014, asserted the Self-Insurance Institute of America, in a statement.
