The CBS Evening News (3/29, story 6, 2:35, Couric) reported, "Just four days ago, President Obama said the new healthcare reform law would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to children with preexisting conditiont." Apparently, "some insurance companies believe they have already found a loophole." But, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, said, "This won't be up to insurance companies to interpret."

        The AP (3/30, Alonso-Zaldivar) reports, "After battling President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul the better part of a year, the insurance industry said Monday it won't try to block his efforts to fix a potentially embarrassing glitch in the new law." The AP adds, "In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the industry's top lobbyist said insurers will accept new regulations to dispel uncertainty over a much-publicized guarantee that children with medical problems can get coverage starting this year." The AP also says, "Quick resolution of the doubts was a win for Obama -- and a sign that the industry has no stomach for another war of words with a president who deftly used double-digit rate hikes by the companies to revive his sweeping healthcare legislation from near collapse in Congress."

        The Hill 's (3/30, O'Brien) Blog Briefing Room says, "The Obama Administration sent a stern warning to health insurers Monday to not exploit loopholes in healthcare law to not cover preexisting conditions among children." The Hill continues, "Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote the head of an insurance industry group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), warning that she's prepared to issue regulations on top of new healthcare law to ensure children's preexisting conditions are covered."

        According to the Wall Street Journal (3/30, Johnson, subscription required), in a letter to AHIP, Sebelius pledged to release new regulations which would require insurers to cover children with preexisting conditions. Sebelius' letter stated, "Now is not the time to search for non-existent loopholes that preserve a broken system."

        Politico 's (3/30, Marr) 44 blog notes that in her letter, Sebelius said, "To ensure that there is no ambiguity on this point, I am preparing to issue regulations in the weeks ahead ensuring that the term 'pre-existing condition exclusion' applies to both a child's access to a plan and to his or her benefits once he or she is in the plan."

        CQ Today (3/30, Wayne, subscription required) also discusses Sebelius' letter to AHIP, and adds, "Tightening coverage rules for children with pre-existing conditions is seen as one of the most important immediate benefits of the law. Most of the law's major provisions don't begin until 2014; insurers will not be required to cover all Americans until then, and the government will not require most people to carry insurance until that date." But, "insurance industry officials say that the law makes no special provision to afford children the right of what is known as 'guaranteed issue' before the rest of the population, in 2014. Instead, they say, the law only requires that if an insurer elects to cover a child before 2014, it cannot refuse to cover treatments for a pre-existing condition."

        Meanwhile, in his Washington Post (3/30) column, Ezra Klein writes, "The politics -- and policy -- of this fight will be interesting. For the Republicans, this is a good issue in that it makes the bill look shoddily written. 'If they can't get these two things right,' Sen. Mitch McConnell asked in his weekly radio address, 'how can we expect them to properly manage the rest of it?'" But, Klein also says, "Oddly, this is also a good issue for the Democrats. Why? Well, it lets them pick a fight with insurers who are trying to deny healthcare coverage to sick little kids." Klein concludes, "The losers here are actually the insurers," who he argues have a "legitimate" understanding of the health reform law. Reuters (3/30, Holland) also covers the story.

        Op-Ed: Obama Administration Must Compel Insurers To Cover Children's Preexisting Conditions. In a Boston Globe (3/30) op-ed, columnist Derrick Z. Jackson writes, "In the days before the healthcare bill was passed, President Obama vowed it would 'end the worst practices of insurance companies,'" who "will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions." Jackson adds, however, that "in the insidious underworld of healthcare, forces are already trying to take this guarantee away from the people. Most notably and shamelessly, insurance companies are attempting to say that they actually do not have to insure all children with pre-existing medical conditions by this fall." He says that the Obama Administration needs "a fix quick" for this problem, such as regulations which HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has indicated she will soon issue.

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