Insurance Commissioners: Miss. Head Calls Changes ‘Mind Boggling’ And Partly ‘Socialist’; Anthem Challenges Maine Superintendent’s No-Profit Ruling For Individual Plans
Memphis Commercial Appeal: Mississippi state Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney "said Wednesday that the volume of changes under the federally mandated health care reform are 'mind boggling' and partly come from 'pure socialist-communist ideas. ... It is taking money from one class of people and giving it to another. It is a socialist system and it's not going to work.' State Rep. Forrest Hamilton, R-Olive Branch, who attended the meeting, said he was 'unnerved' by what he heard" (Lepeska, 11/11).Bangor (Maine) Daily News: "Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maine is challenging a 2009 ruling by insurance Superintendent Mila Kofman that prohibited the company for one year from building profits into monthly premiums for the nongroup, individual insurance policies it sells." The ruling was upheld in a Maine Superior Court appeal 2009; Maine law requires the insurance superintendent to "ensure that rate increases in the individual health insurance market are 'neither inadequate, excessive or unfairly discriminatory.' ... At issue is whether Kofman overstepped her regulatory authority when she disallowed the company's built-in 3 percent profit for the fiscal year that began in July 2009, and instead imposed a zero-percent profit build-in for that year" (Haskell, 11/11).
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