(A) No health insuring corporation, or agent, employee, or representative of a health insuring corporation, shall use any advertisement or solicitation document, or shall engage in any activity, that is unfair, untrue, misleading, or deceptive.

(B) No health insuring corporation shall use a name that is deceptively similar to the name or description of any insurance or surety corporation doing business in this state.

(C) All solicitation documents, advertisements, evidences of coverage, and enrollee identification cards used by a health insuring corporation shall contain the health insuring corporation's name. The use of a trade name, an insurance group designation, the name of a parent company, the name of a division of an affiliated insurance company, a service mark, a slogan, a symbol, or other device, without the name of the health insuring corporation as stated in its articles of incorporation, shall not satisfy this requirement if the usage would have the capacity and tendency to mislead or deceive persons as to the true identity of the health insuring corporation.

(D) No solicitation document or advertisement used by a health insuring corporation shall contain any words, symbols, or physical materials that are so similar in content, phraseology, shape, color, or other characteristic to those used by an agency of the federal government or this state, that prospective enrollees may be led to believe that the solicitation document or advertisement is connected with an agency of the federal government or this state.

(E) A health insuring corporation that provides basic health care services may use the phrase "health maintenance organization" or the abbreviation "HMO" in its marketing name, advertising, solicitation documents, or marketing literature, or in reference to the phrase "doing business as" or the abbreviation "DBA."

(F) This section does not apply to the coverage of beneficiaries enrolled in medicare pursuant to a medicare risk contract or medicare cost contract, or to the coverage of beneficiaries enrolled in the federal employee health benefits program pursuant to 5 U.S.C.A. 8905, or to the coverage of medicaid recipients or to the coverage of beneficiaries under any federal health care program regulated by a federal regulatory body, or to the coverage of beneficiaries under any contract covering officers or employees of the state that has been entered into by the department of administrative services.

Amended by 129th General AssemblyFile No.28, HB 153, §101.01, eff. 10/1/2011.

Effective Date: 07-01-2000; 2008 HB562 09-22-2008