Date: 1996-03-28
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank my colleague and ranking member from Missouri for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to H.R. 3103. and a little background. I was honored to serve 20 years in the Texas legislature. Mr. Speaker. and work for many of those years with the statehouse members to beef up and strengthen our State health insurance regulation laws so that people who buy group insurance would know what they are purchasing. Here today I see this bill would actually abolish that protection. not only in the State of Texas. but State legislatures all over the country have worked for many years to provide and strengthen State oversight of these laws. Mr. Speaker. yesterday I asked the Committee on Rules to make in order my amendment striking the preemption of these multiple employer welfare arrangements. also known as the MEWA insurance laws. because what � happens now is in all of our States. we regulate them. This bill will take away that State regulation and move it to Washington to definitely a universal national standard developed and implemented from Washington and will replace these carefully crafted local State insurance laws that meet the needs of our local States and not necessarily what Is from Washington. Mr. Speaker. that is right. The majority of the Republicans want to move the regulation of these insurance laws from the States to an agency led by what one of my Republican colleagues said in his turn were Communists. We hear a lot of rhetoric from the other side about giving more power to the States. and yet in this issue the Republicans want to take away the States authority to regulate these health plans and give it to the Federal Government. While we have heard about local control rhetoric so much.. the House Republicans want to expand the authority of the Department of Labor with these regulations. In his own estimates. Secretary Reich will have to develop 26 new regulations to deal with the federalization of multiple employer welfare arrangements. The Federal Government got out of this business of regulating MEWAs in 1983 because the States were better equipped to deal with the high instances of fraud on the local level. But now we see this bill will preempt those States rights. and what will it mean to the average American family. State statutes requiring that certain benefits covered by health insurance policies may no longer apply. Again. let me give an example from the State of Texas. In 1973 we changed the law that required insurance policies in Texas have to cover newborn infants. Up until then. a newborn infant had to survive 14 days before the group insurance policy would cover them. That was a mandated benefit. and this bill would possibly take that away unless the Department of Labor somehow says. OK. we are going to have this minimum benefit. This protection would be no longer available. at least on the local level. that the States have decided need to be provided to the purchasers of insurance. Unlike block grants. States have tested and successfully regulated MEWAs. and there is no compelling reason or need to preempt State authority in this area.