Early in December, we predicted that the Governor’s decision to halt the Office of the Insurance Commissioner’s (OCI) emergency rule implementing AB 210 was telling, to say the least, and raised questions as to whether the Governor planned to implement health reform provisions. Weeks later, the Governor indicated that he was halting all implementation of health reform (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) until the Supreme Court decides on its constitutionality in June.

So here’s the rundown on AB 210: The bill was passed by the Assembly with strong Republican support, including the backing of the Insurance Committee chair, Representative Petersen. However, the bill was blocked in the Senate by committee chair Frank Lasee. As a fallback plan, OCI attempted to make the slight technical change to Wisconsin law that enjoyed the strongest support from OCI and the insurance industry – ensuring WI law complied with federal external review processes for health insurance – but the Governor directed OCI to withdraw the rule.

In a recent press release, Rep. Petersen brought attention back to this bill and external reviews. Though he notes that he does not support the ACA, he advocates recognizing that it is currently the law of the land and – until that is no longer the case – Wisconsin law should be made consistent, as would be done with AB 210.  As of March 1^st, Wisconsin insurers will be out of compliance with federal standards for external reviews and will need to use the federal appeals process out of Chicago. Representative Petersen makes a good point – there are aspects of health care reform, like the consumer protections in AB 210 that are currently the law. We need to adopt them in Wisconsin so that Wisconsinites can more easily reap the advantages, instead of “handing over our state’s requirements to the federal government.”  WCCF has no problem with the federal external review process, but we agree with the insurers and Rep. Petersen that it makes more sense to bring Wisconsin’s existing state appeals procedure into compliance, and thereby avoid forcing the appeals to occur in a federal office in Chicago.

Looking at the issue from the perspective of an opponent of the ACA, Petersen’s letter points out that incorporating the federal requirements into state law “won’t influence the arguments before the Supreme Court.”  He cites an October 7th, 2011 letter from Deputy Attorney General Kevin St. John, who wrote that, “It is the Department of Justice’s view that passage of AB‐210 into law will not have any impact on the State’s likelihood of prevailing in the Supreme Court.”

AB 210 was approved easily by the Assembly, but it’s now in the hands of the Senate. It remains to be seen whether Petersen and the insurance companies can convince Lasee and/or the Governor that the lawmakers who want to fight the Affordable Care Act don’t need to do so by symbolically using AB 210 as one of the ways to express their opposition.

Sara Eskrich