BestWeek: State Regulators Embrace Health Reforms, but Insist Oversight Remains With Them.

OLDWICK, N.J. -- While state insurance regulators are working hard to keep most insurance oversight squarely in their hands, they are actively promoting new federal mandates and rules for health insurance--with a major caveat, according to a story in BestWeek U.S./Canada.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is willing, even eager, for federal health care reform to provide a uniform landscape for the nation. Health insurance is too complex, and the problems too large in scope, for the states to act alone, said Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario, vice chairman of the NAIC's Health Insurance and Managed Care Committee. But insurance commissioners are insistent that states must retain full flexibility to implement and enforce health insurance regulations. The NAIC condemned the inclusion of a "Health Choices Commissioner" in H.R. 3200, which recently cleared two House committees (BestWire, July 17, 2009).

"I'm in favor of the federal government writing rules on how exchanges operate, but states should have flexibility to implement it," Ario said.

BestWeek Europe reports that if it is to maintain a leading role in the global market by 2020, the U.K. insurance industry must focus more closely on its customers, improve its risk management skills, forge a partnership with government and become more attractive to capital, according to the Insurance Industry Working Group. The goal, the U.K. Treasury said in a report published by the group, is to see the country emerge by that year as "the leading global insurance center."

Also in BestWeek U.S./Canada, these days, state legislators who want to retain their status as masters of the insurance domain are finding it difficult to get a seat at the table. Before the Obama administration unveiled the most sweeping financial regulatory reform proposals since the Great Depression, it invited major players in insurance to a meeting at the Old Executive Office Building. Property/casualty insurers were there, as were life insurers. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners was represented. The National Conference of Insurance Legislators was not.

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