Overview

• Wadih Damous said the regulator will move from negotiation to mandatory rules if operators do not agree to fixes for the market’s distortions.
• He pressed companies to resume selling individual policies and criticized the reliance on collective-by-adherence products as a way to bypass consumer protections.
• Damous is weighing use of revisão técnica—allowing above-ceiling increases for individual contracts—conditioned on operators restarting individual-plan offerings.
• Treating Unimed Ferj as an emergency, he proposed that the Sistema Unimed initially absorb roughly 50,000 enrollees who live outside Rio state to stabilize service.
• He noted that ANS efforts to regulate collective-plan adjustments are on hold pending an STJ decision, while enrollment has hovered near 50 million, lawsuits exceed 185,000 this year, and the agency faces budget and staffing strains.