Baucus Bill Would Exempt Large Companies from Regulations

Daily Kos: State of the Nation
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Igor Volsky at the Wonk Room explains:

The Senate Finance Committee’s legislation does not require large employers that self insure to abide by the same rules and regulations as insurers operating in the Exchange or the individual health insurance markets. As Rockefeller explained during mark-up, "you are grandfathering in an unfairness in the insurance market, where you treat 50 percent of the American people in one way...and 46 percent in a very favored way without restrictions, without discipline." "Most people don’t know that they are treated so differently. Most people don’t know that they have these restrictions on them," Rockefeller said....

Self-insured plans — which are regulated by a law called ERISA — do not have to accept Americans with pre-existing conditions, or remove caps on out-of-pocket or lifetime expenses. "As many as 73 million people, or 55% of those who get insurance through private-sector jobs, are covered in self-insured plans, according to the non-partisan Employee Benefit Research Institute. Workers are often not aware their plans are self-insured because employers hire insurance companies to process claims."

No wonder the insurance companies loved the Baucus bill.