Republicans Renew Rule Rescinding Readability Requirements

As we noted in a May 3rd blog post, the WI Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI) issued an emergency rule in February suspending improvements made in fall 2010 to the readability of private health insurance plans and electronic access to such plans. Last Thursday, the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) voted 6-4 to extend the OCI change, which was going to run out on July 8th.Extension of the emergency rule gives OCI more time to adopt a permanent rule that rescinds the improvements made last year. The OCI changes are moving forward despite the fact that at the May 3rd OCI hearing, no one testified in favor of the emergency rule. In fact, of the 55 people who submitted written testimony, only one was in favor. Inspired by this public sentiment against the emergency rule, some of the members of the Joint Finance Committee attempted to restore the readability improvements. The motion was defeated on May 12th, by a 4-12 party line vote, with Democrats voting in favor and Republicans voting against.

For more information on the background of this rule, see ABC for Health’s summary.  See also the excellent articles from late April and early May by David Wahlberg in the Wisconsin State Journal and Guy Boulton in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

There could be one more chance for the public to weigh in on this issue.  Before OCI puts the permanent rule in place, it will have to be referred to a committee in each house of the legislature for review, and those committees could choose to hold meetings on the topic.  But regardless of whether either committee decides to hold a hearing, that review period will provide another opportunity for people to communicate with their legislators on the subject of whether the changes made last year should be rescinded.

Sara Eskrich and Jon Peacock