Recently, due to Wellpoint’s well-publicized and much-maligned rate increases here in California, there has been an even stronger call for transparency behind what goes into health insurance rates and why they’re increased. Recently, President Obama and his legislation jumped into the fray as well, according to an article in The Sacramento Bee entitled, “Obama presses health insurers to give details online for rate hikes”.
According to the article, this past Thursday, the Obama administration asked insurance companies to post the justification for their rate hikes on the Internet for everyone to see. Concurrently, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California introduced legislation giving the federal government the ability to reject rate hikes if the insurance companies can’t justify them.
The Obama administration is using unregulated and non-transparent rate hikes such as these as a focal point in their crusade to overhaul health care and health insurance. It’s hoped that having health insurance companies be more transparent about their rates would start the ball rolling on reducing costs.
Also on Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius met with the leading executives of many of the largest health insurance companies, including Wellpoint and others, regarding putting the justifications for their rate hikes public. To this writer’s honest surprise, “insurers didn’t outright dismiss the idea”. This shocked me because I expected that they would.
Overall, this sounds like an excellent idea. More transparency, especially in something this controversial and topical, is always a good thing, and I think the insurance companies would garner a lot of goodwill if they agreed upon this. Will they? It’s doubtful, but it’s not impossible.
More Transparency for Health Insurance Rates and Rate Increases?
Recently, due to Wellpoint’s well-publicized and much-maligned rate increases here in California, there has been an even stronger call for transparency behind what goes into health insurance rates and why they’re increased. Recently, President Obama and his legislation jumped into the fray as well, according to an article in The Sacramento Bee entitled, “Obama presses health insurers to give details online for rate hikes”.
According to the article, this past Thursday, the Obama administration asked insurance companies to post the justification for their rate hikes on the Internet for everyone to see. Concurrently, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California introduced legislation giving the federal government the ability to reject rate hikes if the insurance companies can’t justify them.
The Obama administration is using unregulated and non-transparent rate hikes such as these as a focal point in their crusade to overhaul health care and health insurance. It’s hoped that having health insurance companies be more transparent about their rates would start the ball rolling on reducing costs.
Also on Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius met with the leading executives of many of the largest health insurance companies, including Wellpoint and others, regarding putting the justifications for their rate hikes public. To this writer’s honest surprise, “insurers didn’t outright dismiss the idea”. This shocked me because I expected that they would.
Overall, this sounds like an excellent idea. More transparency, especially in something this controversial and topical, is always a good thing, and I think the insurance companies would garner a lot of goodwill if they agreed upon this. Will they? It’s doubtful, but it’s not impossible.