CBO: Enacting Health Insurance Advisors Act Would Increase Deficits

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 — The Congressional Budget Office issued the following document:

H.R. 1206 would amend current law to exclude compensation paid to insurance agents and brokers from the administrative expenses used to determine the calculation of the medical loss ratio (MLR) for health insurance plans. The bill also would make waivers of certain requirements under the MLR rules easier for states to obtain by requiring the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to defer to a state's findings that the application of those rules would destabilize the state's insurance market. Finally, the legislation would extend the availability of such waivers in other ways.

CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting H.R. 1206 would increase deficits by $531 million over the 2013-2017 period and by about $1.1 billion over the 2013-2022 period. Of this increase in the deficit, $127 million would be a decline in off-budget Social Security revenues between 2013 and 2022. Pay-as-you-go procedures apply because enacting the legislation would affect direct spending and revenues.

The bill contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.

click here to view the complete document: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/hr1206.pdf

TNS MJ88-121108-4098974 StaffFurigay