With little fanfare and little attention from the media, the Obama Administration recently issued proposed rules to crackdown on health insurance scams that use ERISA to avoid state law enforcement and regulatory actions.

Since the 1974 enactment of ERISA — the federal law governing employee pension and health benefit plans — crooks have used it to promote health insurance scams. There have been bipartisan Congressional attempts to address this problem, e.g., the passage of the 1982 amendments to clarify state authority and the 1996 HIPAA amendments to increase penalties for health fraud.  But until the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the federal government has had limited administrative authority to fight health insurance scams.

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This entry was posted by cmonfils on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 at 9:26 pm and is filed under DOL, ERISA, Health Care Legislation, Health Insurance, PPACA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.