NAIC Spring Meeting Update Part Two

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As discussed in last week’s article, along with almost 3,000 regulators and insurance industry leaders, the Maynard Nexsen Insurance Regulatory team of attorneys attended the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) Spring National Meeting on March 23-26 in Indianapolis, Indiana.  The Meeting focused on key consumer protection and industry stability initiatives released by the NAIC Executive Committee earlier this year, including:  

Cybersecurity Incident and Market-Disruption Frameworks: In support of its charge to research the use of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) in the business of insurance and evaluate existing regulatory frameworks for overseeing and monitoring their use, at the Spring meeting the NAIC Innovation, Cybersecurity, and Technology (H) Committee (the “H Committee”) working group on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence discussed progress on the Health Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Survey (the “Health AI/ML Survey”).  The goals of the survey are to: 1) gain a better understanding of the insurance industry’s use and governance of AI; 2) seek information that could help develop guidance or a potential regulatory framework to support the insurance industry's use of AI; and 3) inform regulators of the current and planned business practices of companies.  The survey is being conducted under the examination authorities of 16 participating states, including Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. We expect that the Health AI/ML Survey will be publicly released this month (April 2025) and will provide recommendations for the next steps in using big data and AI in the health insurance industry.

Protecting Consumers’ Access to Health Insurance Options:  The Health Insurance and Managed Care (B) Committee (the “B Committee”) continued its efforts to protect consumers’ access to health insurance options and discussed the impact of the enhanced Federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium subsidies on coverage.  Specifically, the B Committee discussed how the end of those subsidies will increase costs with an expected premium increase of an average of 95% for individual marketplace enrollees, resulting in an estimated 4 million individuals expected to lose health insurance coverage.  The B Committee evaluated state regulatory considerations in responding to this issue, including market instability, plan and rate filing uncertainty, interplay with other state initiatives and affordability programs, and coordination with state-based exchanges.  After the Spring meeting, the NAIC announced its 2025 Federal Legislative and Regulatory Priorities relating to this initiative, including its efforts to extend the enhanced ACA premium subsidies and promote and preserve state flexibility to manage the insurance markets by encouraging Congress and the Administration to preserve existing state flexibilities through ACA waivers and supporting state-based policies in areas like state exchanges and essential health benefit benchmarks.

Work on these NAIC initiatives will continue throughout the year and at the NAIC Summer Meeting, August 10-13, 2025, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.