Anthem Blue Cross, California’s largest for-profit insurer, was asked by California insurance regulators to postpone problematic rate increases for individual policies. These rate increases, some as much as 39%, have “triggered widespread criticism from subscribers and brokers — and now from the federal government,” reports Duke Helfand from the Los Angeles Times. The Obama administration requested that Anthem justify these rate increases, and according to Helfand, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “voiced serious concern [in a letter to Anthem's president] over the higher premiums, which go into effect March 1 for many of the insurer’s estimated 800,000 individual policyholders.”
These rate hikes come at a startling time because customers are already facing high healthcare costs, and Sebelius goes on to say that “these extraordinary increases are up to 15 times faster than inflation and threaten to make healthcare unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of Californians, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet in a difficult economy.”
Helfand reports that a lot of policyholders say these rate increases are the highest they can remember, and some “speculated that the company was moving to raise rates ahead of possible national healthcare reform, pending in Congress.” Anthem Blue Cross says the costs have increased partly because the struggling economy has caused many people in good health to choose not to get health insurance, leaving only those with bigger health problems as their only customers.
What do you think about Anthem’s rate increases?
If you are underinsured or uninsured, visit pricedoc.com to compare prices for any medical procedure you might need, and to find affordable, quality doctors and dentists in your area.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
My Anthem high deductible policy has doubled in the last two years. My rate increase this time is around 39% (I actually figured it was about 40%). The cost of my policy will be about $1000/month (996) for a family of five. The clincher is that this policy has a 5000 deductible on each covered member. This policy offers very little benefit except in the case of catastrophe for our family, a scenario that both my family and Anthem expects and hopes will never happen. Either way, it also requires a willingness and ability to pay out of pocket medical costs. The fact that such limited coverage now comes with such a high price tag puts this type of policy out of reach for many. It also makes it harder for those covered with this type of policy to be able to afford the out-of-pocket costs that carrying this type of coverage demands which is likely to result in poorer medical outcomes.
I read somewhere that Obama tried to use the Anthem premium increases as evidence of the need to pass health insurance reform. If by this he means the Senate version of health “insurance” reform, then he is flat out wrong. In fact it underscores the fact that insurance companies cannot be trusted to put the needs of their customers ahead of their blood lust for profits. To mandate that consumers buy these outrageously priced insurance “products” without providing an alternative is a criminal reflection of just how bought-off our “government by, for and of the people” is. There absolutely are not enough protections for the consumers in the Senate bill, and in the end more people will go bankrupt due to high cost of care and lack of access due to profit taking by insurance companies, more people will forego treatments and preventive measures due to out-of -pocket costs of co-pays and deductibles even if they are given subsidies to buy nominal coverage. This will result in more pain, suffering, and death; and, the American people will continue to be subservient and vulnerable to corporate entities that have no real regard for them.
The price increases sought by Anthem are more evidence that we need a public option open to all Americans from day one in order to force insurance companies to act in good faith towards the consumer. This would be the minimal level of reform that would actually serve the American people, as it is well-known that the greatest cost-savings and actual health benefits to consumers can only be achieved by a single-payer system modeled on Medicare.