Broker Regulation

The Republican-controlled state budget committee voted Thursday to approve about $225 million in Medicaid cuts expected to result in about 65,000 poor adults and children leaving health insurance programs, either because they would no longer be eligible or they could no longer afford coverage.

House GOP leaders have scheduled a vote next week on a constitutional amendment that would require a balanced federal budget.

Eleven insurance companies doing business in New York have been ordered by the governor there to refund $114.5 million to policyholders who were overcharged for health insurance premiums in 2010, with more than half of the refunds due coming from Empire, the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) announced...

Consumer Watchdog filed a ballot initiative in California to make health insurance companies open their books to forcing them to justify, under penalty of perjury, their proposed rate changes before they take effect.

Even as a recent good-faith swap of offers showed a narrowing of differences over taxes, a special deficit-cutting "supercommittee" seems to have hit a major snag just two weeks before its deadline.

Members of a special deficit-cutting panel are getting renewed encouragement from their colleagues even as they remain far apart on taxes and cuts to so-called entitlement programs like Medicare.