Lobbying

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is publicizing a set of state-level polls that they claim show that "voters overwhelmingly oppose the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency," a component of financial reform legislation set to be debated next week in the House of Representatives. The survey polled 500 voters each in Nebraska and Arkansas, and was performed by the polling firm Ayres McHenry & Associates. Previous polls done by Ayres McHenry for the Chamber have been deemed unreliable by the New York Times, and not up to their standards for publication.

Now that Congress has taken final action on its health care reform legislation, the reform debate has now shifted to, of all places, Denver.

The legislation that is now the law of the land was just the first step. Despite its size -- more than 2,000 pages -- the bill in many cases only lays out Congressional intent. In that sense, it is a framework for reform. The law requires that numerous new regulations be written to govern the way health insurers do business, a responsibility that Congress passed on not only to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services but also to one very influential non-governmental organization: the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). The bill mentions the NAIC -- an acronym most Americans probably only see once a year when they renew their cars' license plates -- at least 10 times, and it gives the organization some very important assignments.