A Republican proposal to allow interstate sales of insurance policies looks set to gather steam as Georgia congressman Tom Price takes the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Selling insurance across state lines is the measure with which the GOP plans to supplant the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Congressman Price’s state has already tested the waters of interstate insurance sales as Georgia legislature passed a law in 2011 that allows carriers to sell policies offered in other states to Georgia residents.
Proponents of the law say it allows them to go around Georgia’s required benefit inclusions, such as cervical cancer screenings, monitoring for prostate and colorectal cancer, and mammograms - which allows them to reduce the sticker price of their policies. Indeed the ACA has a similar provision, which has been in effect since January, which allows individual states to enter agreements to let health insurance companies sell policies across their borders.
However, critics are panning the measure because they believe it will undermine competitiveness in the market.
Cindy Zeldin, executive director of consumer group Georgians for a Healthy Future, explained that interstate sales “would erode rights and protections for health care consumers, complicate their efforts to find in-network providers, and do little to nothing to improve affordability” in an interview with the Albany Herald.
More than half a million residents in Georgia could lose their coverage if ACA is replaced without an appropriate replacement, Zeldin added.
“Buying a health insurance plan from Texas or Idaho isn’t going to solve the problem, and would leave consumers in Georgia with little recourse if they were treated unfairly by an insurance company based in another state or in cases of fraud,” she concluded.
