The health care reform package currently being negotiated in the Senate contemplates requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 90 percent of premiums on medical claims. But the Congressional Budget Office is warning lawmakers mandating such a high Medical Loss Ratio would be overreaching – unless their goal is to takeover those health insurance carriers. Which, as Megan McArdle notes on The Atlantic’s site, means the 90 percent mandated medical loss ratio would turn “the operations of the nation’s health insurers [into a part of] the financial statements of the United States government.”
Lawmakers could ignore the CBO memo, but are unlikely to do so. The credibility of the CBO is simply too high. This means the chances of a 90 percent medical loss ratio (“MLR”) requirement making it into the final health care reform bill has dropped from “well, maybe” to “not a chance” – or lower.
The CBO memorandum reasons that requiring carriers to meet a 90 percent medical loss ratio could drive carriers out of business, reduce plan offerings and take other actions limiting choice in the marketplace. The key to determining the impact of MLR requirements is to look at the percentage of health insurance carriers impacted by the requirement. “A policy that affected a majority of issuers would be likely to substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices and number of private sellers of health insurance,” the CBO memo states.
The CBO won’t say precisely when a required medical loss ratio crosses the line and becomes a government takeover of the industry. But it did give a hint, saying an MLR requirement “at 80 percent or lower for the individual and small-group markets or at 85 percent or lower for the large-group market would not cause CBO to consider transactions in those markets as part of the federal budget.”
Moving health insurance transactions isn’t what proponents of a mandated MLR had in mind when the put forward the idea. But unintended consequences are, well, just that: unintended. There are a lot of reasons why mandating medical loss ratios is bad public policy. The CBO has added another to the long list, a reason that even it’s most ardent advocates are unlikely to be able to overcome.