The Obama administration and state insurance regulators are developing stricter standards to address the concerns of consumers who say that many health plans under the Affordable Care Act have unduly limited their choices of doctors and hospitals (mostly individual, not group plans), leaving them with unexpected medical bills. Carriers are looking to further stratify their networks in their 2015 plan offerings, so plans are available at numerous price-points to attract consumers with varying needs.

Federal officials said the new standards would be similar to those used by the government to determine whether Medicare Advantage plans had enough doctors and hospitals in their networks. These private plans, sold by companies like UnitedHealth and Humana, provide comprehensive care to 16 million of the 54 million Medicare beneficiaries.

States are free to adopt additional standards of their own, and Washington did so in late April.

“I heard from many consumers who were upset to find their health plan no longer included their trusted doctor or hospital,” said Mike Kreidler, the insurance commissioner of Washington State. “Some people discovered this only after they had enrolled.”

Mr. Kreidler said the new standards were needed to deal with “an emerging trend toward narrower networks of medical providers.”

If a network is viewed as inadequate, patients may need to seek care from doctors outside the network, incurring thousands of dollars in costs not covered by insurance.

New York adopted a law this year to protect consumers against such “surprise medical bills.” Before treatment, doctors must tell patients what insurance they accept. If an insurer does not have a doctor with the expertise to treat a patient’s problem, the patient can go to providers outside the network at no additional cost.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, representing state officials, is updating its 18-year-old model law to add new consumer protections, after finding that some insurers tried to cut costs by excluding children’s hospitals and academic medical centers. Cancer treatment centers say they, too, have been excluded from many health plan networks.

To read more, click here.

Jeffrey R. Ungvary President