Health Affairs Blog: New Policy Brief Explores Insurance Market Reforms

by Chris Fleming

Congress is debating provisions of health reform bills that would considerably revamp segments of the private health insurance market. Focused on health insurance for individuals and small businesses, the changes would end the commonplace practice in these parts of the insurance market of using health status to set premiums or deny coverage.

A new Health Policy Brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation examines these proposed market reforms and new consumer protection measures. The provisions have won unprecedented support from both consumer advocates and, with some qualifications, from insurance industry leaders. But insurers remain concerned that inadequate penalties for enforcing a mandate on individuals to purchase coverage could keep millions uninsured. That, they say, could spur “adverse selection,” in which only the sickest people would sign up for coverage, and would defeat the entire premise of insurance market reform.

The legislation adopted by three committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and two U.S. Senate committees all would impose new federal regulations on individual health insurance, as follows:
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