Do state parity laws reduce the financial burden on families of children with mental health care needs?
The intent of parity laws is to improve equity in private insurance coverage for mental health care. Health insurers have covered mental health care at a significantly lower level than coverage for other conditions for many years (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 1982; Jensen et al. 1998; Buck et...

Regulation of bad things that almost never happen but could: HIPAA and the individual insurance market.
Since the collapse of the Clinton plan for large-scale health reform, Congress has approached the medical care sector of the economy very gingerly. One apparent lesson of the reform (though an obvious lesson in life) is that people are much less eager for improvements they have to pay for...

A regulatory bypass operation.
Our health insurance choices are burdened by thickening fatty deposits of regulatory sclerosis. We need to open up some new arteries for consumer-driven health care reform. A regulatory bypass operation would insert market-based shunts, grafts, and transplants into health insurance regulation, before the current seeds of comprehensive federal regulation,...

The case for state regulation. (Opinion).
An industry leader argues that the current state-by-state insurance regulatory system--with some changes to address issues of company licensing, financial regulation, corporate governance, and rate and form filing efficiency--can best meet the challenges the industry faces in the future. Today, insurance companies, producers, consumers, and regulators face...

The Australian private health insurance boom: was it subsidies or liberalised regulation?
1 Introduction Over a three-year period from July 1997 to July 2000, the Australian government introduced two waves of price subsidies, then liberalised regulation to increase private health insurance coverage. The combined effect of the policies was an increase in the population coverage from a low point...

A closer look at 2003. (Insurance Executive).
The industry will face challenging public policy issues that go to the core of how insurance will be regulated in future years, to the financial well being of the insurance industry and of its customers in the face of the risks of terrorism and asbestos, and to the continued...

Insurance regulation: a time for change; can the states fix the age-old system of insurance regulation to meet the needs of the modern economy, or will a federal takeover leave consumers to fend for themselves?
A bride and groom stand before a majestic view as the Beatles song plays, "When I get old and losing my hair, many years from now..." The commercial moves through images of the couple's life together: having children, paying for college and then, as seniors, embracing as they look...

Regulating without a net: States must walk a tightrope of regulatory reform and consumer protections or risk losing their oversight of the nearly $1 trillion insurance industry.
When Kentucky Representative Steve Riggs discusses the value of state insurance regulation, he likes to tell the story of the Lakedreamland Volunteer Fire Department of Jefferson County. The small local company took out a group life insurance policy from an out-of-state company. Years passed until a tragic event took...

A comparative analysis of mandated benefit laws, 1949-2002.
Individuals are likely to have more information about their potential need for care than insurers, so the latter have concerns that potential enrollees seeking coverage may be at greater than average risk. This information asymmetry creates incentives for insurers to offer less broad coverage than the public would want...

Captives: playing to the audience; as the captive insurance solution makes hay in this hard-market era, captive conferences are thriving as unique clearinghouses for promoting the captive ideal--and for confronting its questions. (Captives).
The worst of times, the best of times--Charles Dickens' classic contradiction has never seemed more apt than in today's insurance world. With post-9/11 uncertainty wagging the dog, premiums are nonetheless rocketing and profitability looms. Indeed, if you're an insurance buyer, times are tough, but if you're a captive insurance...