The law requires insurers to give out annual rebates ... if less than 80 percent of the premium dollars they collect go toward medical care. For insurers covering large employers, the threshold is 85 percent.

So insurance companies have to give rebates if they aren't spending much of their customer's premiums on medical care.  Sound reasonable?

“It does make sense,” Ms. Wagner, 29, said of the rebate rule. “Why should they get to spend all this money on advertising and lining the pockets of people who own the company and make me pay more?” 

 Agreed.

Insurance companies say the rebate requirement does not address swiftly rising medical costs, which they say are the main reason premiums keep going up.

“Placing an arbitrary cap on administrative costs is going to do nothing to make health care more affordable,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there." 

So "insurance companies say" (what human being said it?) that they shouldn't have to give back money they don't spend on medical care because they have to spend a lot of money on medical care.  Good argument.  Also, a insurance company spokesmodel administrator says that paying lots of money to administrators is crucial to affordable healthcare, and then implies that someone other than him is trying to confuse people. 

Naturally the titans of journalism at the NYT make no effort to clarify anything.