Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Says Regulations Will Stop Insurers Who Avoid Sick Kids
By LAUREN COX and LARA SALAHI
Days after President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, theDepartment of Health and Human Services had harsh words for some insurance companies and their treatment of children.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pointed to "recent media accounts" that some health insurance companies planned to only cover pre-existing conditions if a child already has health insurance when guaranteed coverage for children begins in September. (Adults will have to wait until 2014 to be guaranteed insurance coverage regardless of any pre-existing conditions)
For children with pre-existing conditions but no health insurance, Sebelius said she worried that health insurers thought they weren't obligated to provide insurance at all. Some have debated the meaning of the provision since it was signed last week.
"The American people debated and discussed health insurance reform for more than a year… Now is not the time to search for non-existent loopholes that preserve a broken system," Sebelius wrote Monday in a letter to the president of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Sebelius also said she will issue regulations to make sure insurance companies obey the more-inclusionary language of the law.
Karen Ignagni, president of AHIP, replied that "we await and will fully comply with regulations consistent with the principles described in your letter".
HHS spokesman Nicholas Papas said the story of Houston Tracy, now 16 days old and about to leave the hospital, "would be helped by the new provision".
ABC News
