State Managed Care Laws. This report is telling. It shows both great interest and huge gaps in protecting consumers in managed care plans. It points to the need for the federal legislation that would guarantee at a minimum, a basic floor of consumer protections across the nation. Right now, there is little consistency from state to state.
Some states have only one or two protections.
Some have none. A few key states, like Vermont, have gone a long way for consumers. That means, in close to two-thirds of the states, consumers have very few protections at all. Even more telling is the number of consumers who are not affected even when their state does enact a consumer protection law. In short 51 million people in this country have virtually no consumer protections.