Hatch questions ObamaCare transition period for Massachusetts

{mosads}The Affordable Care Act limits price variation in healthcare coverage, allowing insurers to discriminate based only on age, location, tobacco use and family size. Massachusetts has similar rules in place, including a stricter age band of 2:1.

Some analysts have said the new federal rules will prompt a period of “rate shock,” particularly in the individual and small-group insurance markets. Hatch argued that Massachusetts’s transition period will allow it to avoid that outcome. 

He asked for the specific legal authority behind HHS’s decision to allow the transition period, and why that authority would not allow similar flexibility for other states.