Commissioner Mike Chaney LIVE from Neshoba Co Fair

[transcript] from Founder Square within the Shelby County Fair right in the middle of fair week. We're going to be here tomorrow as well. Continuing with the action pack lineup is now the commissioner of the Mississippi Insurance Department for the state of Mississippi, Mr. Mike Cheney. Commissioner, good to have y'all. Well, I hope you can hear me, Gerard. There was a great balls there. That's because I wasn't going to say anything bad about the University Medical Center Blue Cross Blue Shield. I didn't say anything about that. I know. I didn't either. Except during the fair. Well, you hadn't even dove in there yet. But you've spoken this morning already. I have spoken this morning. What was your message? Basically the message has been that next year, besides healthcare and hurricanes, our biggest issue may be pet insurance. Pet insurance. You know, there were not a lot several weeks ago and he said, Mike, what's the biggest issue? I said outside of health insurance and hurricanes is going to be pet insurance. That's serious. That's a big deal. But we get that handle. The other message was that we won't the University Medical Center and Blue Cross Blue Shield to have a meeting of the minds and find some common ground and get this network issue settled. Yeah. And where is it right now? What's the latest? Well, the mediator doesn't give us an updated report. But I hadn't heard anything from him in four weeks. I assume that nothing's happened. And then last night someone called me and informed me that the University Medical Center had purchased another month's worth of billboard ads against, you know, billboards against Blue Cross. So I really don't, I can't tell the public what the progress is because we don't know. And what we do know, we can't tell anyway. So it's a complicated issue. You see some lawsuits coming out of this? Yeah, possibly some lawsuits. Not over the network so much, but over frivolous things that will happen. But the problem is that you counsel people's insurance in midstream and out of contract with a carrier to be able to use the University Medical Center and the University Medical Center Council of Evergreen Contract back in March. So there are a lot of people that fault here. It's not just one person. Decade both the finger at UMMC or Blue Cross Blue Shield. Everybody's guilty here of doing something wrong. But when you have to send people that need liver transplants to Houston, and we've got a guy from right here in Philadelphia, a young 28-year-old man, and I have to be careful not to violate any hip laws, but he couldn't get a liver transplant at the University Medical Center. So he's in Houston now. He had Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas. But the way that works, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi and ministers that program for the Texas Blue Cross, I think it's complicated. But he's in Texas and hopefully will help him. The other guy that's been people have talked about is Mr. Dugan. He's been wide open. But to enable him to get his transplant, he had to change carrier. So he just dropped Blue Cross and went to another carrier that's going to pay for the liver transplant. Interesting. Yeah, Mr. Dugan's been on the program before. So yeah, it's complicated. It's deep. It's wide. But in the meantime, we're seem to be at an impasse and it doesn't seem to be any breakthrough. The both sides I have a fairly sizable financial gap between them right now. They really do and they're both well-heeled and have a lot of, I say well-heeled. In the fact, they got a lot of money. Yep. And I prohibited from court brilliance from talking about certain financial aspects because Blue Cross went to court and got us an injection against me. But I can't say that both parties should be able to sit down and I think Blue Cross Blue Shield is capable of paying more of the University Medical Center but not paying what they want. They want a 40% increase. You're not going to get that. Yeah. And the University Medical Center is certainly capable of accepting something that's reasonable. So both parties could work this out if they just get out of the room. This is not rocket science. They know what it's going to cost them. This is just two people being hard-headed. Hmm. Interesting. Well, obviously we're not privy to the negotiations and the discussions with them with the mediator. But if they're going out and spending more money on billboards and outdoor advertising, that would seem to indicate that they're not close at this point. That's what it said to me. I've somebody called me last night and sent me a text and I said, that's the first time I'd heard that. But that's a pretty good indicator that they're not looking to settle in August of for the first September. Right. Otherwise that would be a frivolous investment. And I would say the worst thing that would happen would be to try to get a legislative solution because no telling what that would end up being. Yeah. I don't think everybody's got a different opinion. But it's top. What we're headed for is health care providers, especially corporations. These are not doctors necessarily. Gerard will start saying, you're going to pay me what I want to be paid to use my hospital, or I'm not going to see you. So that made a gate. What insurance is willing to do. And if you don't have networks, they can charge you $500,000 for a liver transplant. Right. And that's going to break the system and what you go in up with is socialized medicine and single pair or system, which is a worse scenario of all of them. So people have to work within the framework of the laws that we have today. And neither one of them doing this because University Medical Center has a statutory law of regulation 37 days, one one five. It says they're supposed to see and take care of every person in Mississippi at their public hospital. And on the other side, Blue Cross Blue Shield has statutory laws that says they're supposed to have adequate network, right? Network adequacy, right? And that's under of Section 83, 5201 of the code. And people are interested in that right now. And what's the interest it in is what can we do to fix this problem? And what you can do to fix this problem is make these two people to entities get into a room and work it out. Yeah. Something else is going on, Commissioner Cheney, Commissioner Mike Cheney, Mississippi Department of Insurance is our guest is the Democrats appear to be fairly close to extending the Obamacare enhancements that were passed as part of the American Rescue Plan, which lowered premium costs by the threshold test, the federal poverty level and income test, also eliminated the so-called subsidy cliff, which allows anyone whose income is more than 400% of the federal poverty level to qualify for these benefits. And at 150% of the FPL, it's zero cost, which is actually better than Medicaid expansion for able-bodied adults can get private coverage in the exchange. Have you guys contemplated how this may affect your world? We have looked at it earlier in place so far. We'd like to add it, but the problem is we as regulators in this country, I'm talking about the 50th Office in the United States and the District of Columbia of American Somalia and the other in its territories, which are three others, have not been informed as to what the legislation would be. We had assumed that they would just extend the tax credits as they are, but now the Biden administration is adding a lot of stuff to it. It's going to complicate issues for us as regulators, but they're looking at us and I said, we're not going to let you all regulate at a state level. We're going to start doing it from a federal level. And even Obama himself said that would not work. Yeah, I remember that. So, I don't know if Biden and Harris know something. I don't know, but they're acting like they know something that they don't know. They're acting like idiots sometimes. Well, the reason, as you probably aware, Commissioner, that this is highly probable to become a reality is because Senator Joe Manchin, who's been the firewall to the big giant billback better plan, has indicated the last couple of weeks he could get on board with that. And so the Democrats Chuck Schumer, he's counting on Joe Manchin supporting this water down bill, which primarily includes that. Well, I don't know what Manchin will do. I would find it hard to believe he had voted for it, but he might. He's still a Democrat. And he's got to get a reelected as a Democrat in his district. So he may do that. What I would hope is to send it was stop it. Yeah. But we've got bid terms coming up. You've got to keep the system in place. It would be chaotic. Not to complete the system that we have now and keep it funded because you'd have eight million people without insurance in the world. Yeah. And that's the concern. And also that these enhancements that everybody's gotten used to, that buys their coverage in the exchanges. That all ends at the end of the year. And the concern is that, well, premiums are going to go up. I shared an example the other day where someone could see their premiums rise by as much as 50% who's currently buying their insurance in the exchanges. So all that's kind of waiting out there. And I think the Democrats are going to use that very powerfully in their election bids. So anyhow, that back to turn the whole thing upside down, especially if you're saying they want to pull back the regulation to the federal level. I don't like that at all. Well, I don't either. And it's kind of like, I'm chair of the Seek Committee at the National Associates of Insurance Commissioners. And part of my job is to try to keep federal and invention out of our system. And one of the things that I owe that's the federal insurance office wants to do is that one automobile insurance for everybody in the country. Oh my gosh. You did not want to drive. You're going to pay the same premium. You can't have it. No, that wouldn't work. That would be a disaster. And what it would do. So you talk about the famous clip from Barack Obama was choicey competition. That's the antithesis of choicey competition right there. I mean, that would, I wouldn't be an e-bikes best interest. Well, lots of stuff brewing for sure real quickly before we go. What about the firecat? I mean, how are we doing there? Firecat is doing good. We're building a new dorm. And we've got the limits taken off for folks that we can help train the merchant medical responders. That's a big deal tonight. Yeah, I know what it is. About 90% of our calls as firefighters happens to be taking care of folks with medical needs. Yeah, I got it. Well, appreciate you coming on. As always. Thank you for your hard work. Always a pleasure. Yes, sir. We're good. We appreciate it. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. We'll step aside for a break right here.