Cassidy Fights to Save Private Health Care Marketplace

Press Release

Congressman Bill Cassidy M.D. (R-LA) today introduced legislation to ensure that businesses are able to continue to provide quality health benefits to their employees through self-insured group health plans.

"Millions of Americans were told they could keep their health insurance if they wanted to. Now we find out that was a lie and every day we see more and more problems with Obamacare. We need to do everything we can to protect small businesses from Obamacare." said Rep. Cassidy.

Cassidy continued, "Small businesses are the engine of our economy. We need to stand up for these job creators and ensure they are able to continue offering quality, free-market health care options to their employees. Our objective is to protect a very successful part of the private health care marketplace that benefits small, mid-size, and large employers."

The Self-Insurance Protection Act (SIPA), HR 3462 would clarify existing law to ensure that federal regulators cannot re-define stop-loss insurance as traditional "health insurance," thus protecting employers' ability to continue offering employee health benefits.

Although no rule-making process has been announced, the Obama Administration has signaled interest in ending stop-loss insurance as we know it, thereby forcing some companies to make a difficult choice between offering employee health benefits and incurring the risk of a catastrophic medical claim, or sending employees into the individual market to purchase their own insurance.

It is estimated that nearly 100 million Americans receive health benefits through various forms self-insured plans.

Such plans allow sponsors to customize benefits to meet the specific needs of their workforce, while providing more cost control opportunities as compared to traditional "fully-insured" group health plans.

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