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PORTLAND, Maine – The federal polity Tuesday acknowledged Maine a relinquishment of a key provision in President Barack Obama's upbeat tending overhaul, citing the probability that enforcement could modify the state's mart for individualist upbeat insurance.

The U.S. Health and Human Services division said in a letter it would abandon the requirement that insurers spend 80 cents to 85 cents of every payment note on scrutiny tending and calibre improvement. Instead, the letter said, the land could maintain its 65 proportionality accepted for threesome years, with the caveat that HHS intends to review the figures after two years.

The selection makes Maine the first land to receive a relinquishment of the requirement. Similar requests are pending from Kentucky, Nevada and New Hampshire.

In hunt the waiver, Maine Insurance Superintendent Mila Kofman feared that one of threesome field insurers offering individualist plans in Maine would stop from the mart nudity if the federal requirement remained in place. The insurer, MEGA Life and Health Insurance Co., has 37 proportionality of the state's individualist market.

MEGA's departure from the mart would circularize the "reasonable probability of destabilizing the Maine individualist market," with costly ramifications for MEGA's policy holders, wrote Steven Larsen, an HHS deputy administrator.

"We revalue the evidence-based approach HHS took with our letter and in working with us," Kofman said in a statement.

Maine's individualist shelter mart has been volatile, with big payment increases attributed in part to the diminutive number of enrollees and lack of competition. There hit been fears the mart could collapse altogether.

As of last September, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield had the large mart share with 18,297 individualist policies, followed by MEGA Life and Health's 13,732 and Harvard colonist Health Care's 4,935. Harvard colonist provides coverage finished DirigoChoice, the state-subsidized upbeat shelter program.

An authorised from MEGA Life and Health didn't immediately convey a call from The Associated Press.

The Affordable Care Act allows states to petition to retard the federal accepted until 2014 on how such money from premiums must go to scrutiny tending for the individualist market. Administrative costs run to be higher on those plans than on shelter plans provided finished employers.

The federal accumulation envisions that by 2014 there module be upbeat shelter exchanges to provide individuals with new, affordable options for upbeat tending options.

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