The Amicus brief argues that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) ObamaCare deprives Americans of liberty by removing health care choices; and that the legislation and associated regulations will decimate the “bronze” plan options, leaving even fewer choices, further restricting liberty and greatly increasing the cost and therefore the burden of the mandate to purchase health insurance on individuals, small businesses and States.

Further, the brief cites a number of recent articles, including one by former Obama administration officials, who predict the end of insurance companies, in a NYT piece titled “The End of Insurance Companies.” This is important on the points of ObamaCare restricting liberty, but also because you need an HSA qualified health insurance plan to open an HSA or to contribute to it. These former Obama advisors, Ezekiel J. Emanuel & Jeffrey B. Liebman, actually write in the NYT’s that the “final bonus” is that accountable care organizations will relieve consumers of the need to choose among insurance plans, because these are choices “that few of us are any good at making.”

The Amicus brief also cites a study by Milliman, Inc., the world’s premier actuarial firm, on the impact of the Medical Loss Ratio regulations just issued by HHS. For a digestible summary, here is the press release about the Milliman report by the American Banker’s Association’s HSA Council. For full disclosure, I am an outside consultant for the HSA Council and I am also the President of the HSA Coalition.

There are fun quotes in the brief about then Speaker Pelosi’s statement that we would all have to wait for ObamaCare to pass, to see what is in it, as well as quotes from President Obama about how he wants to keep HSAs as an option.

The reality is that the current Medical Loss Ratio regulations will mean the end of insurers offering HSAs to the individual and small group markets, likely sooner than later.

Nothing says BIG FUN like reading an Amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court asking to affirm the 11th Circuit Court decision to make ObamaCare null and void.

Cross posted at the HSA Coalition.

Roy Ramthun has written a great paper on HHS’s proposed-final regulation on Medical Loss Ratio, and how it will impact HSAs and other Bronze Plans in the exchanges:

The final medical loss ratio (MLR) regulations will likely create a vacuum for affordable coverage that cannot be filled by Bronze plans under the state insurance exchanges. If the “essential benefits” and “actuarial value” requirements are equally as discriminatory, there will be no affordable options available and the cost of subsidies will skyrocket. As a result, millions of Americans that have policies today that could have qualified as Bronze plans will be forced to change their coverage or drop coverage because they can no longer afford it.

Ramthun’s paper is here.

My last RedState post, which is on this exact subject, is here.

Roy has outlined how you can help, by commenting on the HHS rule — but you must comment by the January 6, 2012 deadline!

The urge of government health care bureaucrats to impose their will on the market, regardless of warnings and repeated petitioning for redress for relief, overpowered petitions in the latest medical loss ratio (MLR) rule by HHS.

The result of the new rule will mean one thing: no bronze plans, at all, in the ObamaCare exchanges. (Bronze plans are the low cost plan that ObamaCare envisioned in their exchanges.)

The future of the exchanges is clear — it will be populated with expensive plans for the less healthy. The healthy will simply go without insurance or find it outside the exchanges — at least until they become sick.

The government bureaucrat’s “management” of the market is management by bias. This bias has resulted in the bureaucrats rejecting out-of-hand, simple fixes for simple problems with the medical loss ratio rule.

For example, the health savings account qualified health plan, and other health plans with healthy deductibles, cannot meet the the MLR limits set by the rule. Not because HSA qualified plans are inherently incapable of meeting the MRL limits, but because the rules of how MLR is computed discriminates against HSAs and other health plans with higher deductibles.

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