August 9th, 2011

The Hill reports:

State legislators are concerned that a new program in the healthcare reform law will reopen a series of problems that states tackled years ago.

The National Conference of Insurance Legislators is worried about the law’s new long-term-care insurance program, known as CLASS.

NCOIL President George Keiser, a Republican state lawmaker in North Dakota, said the group is worried that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department eventually will have to raise premiums for the CLASS program significantly, driving people away from buying long-term-care insurance.

CLASS is slated to begin collecting premiums before it pays out benefits, to help ensure it has enough money on hand to cover claims for long-term care, such as nursing-home stays. But Keiser said HHS hasn’t done enough to make sure that CLASS’s premiums will be high enough to cover its costs.

For the rest of the story, read The Hill