Insurers Seek Big Premium Boosts

Wall Street Journal ^ | May 25, 2016 | LOUISE RADNOFSKY

[reaganaut1]

Big health plans stung by losses in the first few years of the U.S. health law’s implementation are seeking hefty premium increases for individual plans sold through insurance exchanges in more than a dozen states.

The insurers’ proposed rates for individual coverage in states that have made their 2017 requests public largely bear out health plans’ grim predictions about their challenges under the health-care overhaul.

According to the insurers’ filings with regulators, large plans in states including New York, Pennsylvania and Georgia are seeking to raise rates by 20% or more.

In states such as Florida and Maryland, insurers are seeking to raise premiums by percentage averages that are markedly above 10%. Among those that have published so far, only in Vermont do big insurers’ requests fall below 10%.

Proposals still have to be approved by state regulators, and a full picture of final approved rates across the entire country likely won’t be known until shortly before HealthCare.gov and state equivalents reopen for the law’s fourth main enrollment window on Nov. 1.

Nonetheless, the proposed average increases that are available are a vivid indicator this year of how insurers are adapting to the 2010 Affordable Care Act’s transformation of the way health coverage is priced and sold in the U.S.

Making coverage available to everyone regardless of medical history, at the same price and with limited variation based on age is one of the most popular provisions of the law. But it also has increased the cost of insurance for many healthy people, causing a quandary for insurers who are trying to encourage people with cleaner bills of health to buy coverage and offset the costs of sicker enrollees.

[Deo volente]

A $100,000 lifetime limit on benefits is useless. Cancer is one disease where the ongoing treatments will add up to that figure in no time at all.
We’re not talking extraordinary procedures here, just simple chemotherapy, radiation, things like that. The prescription drugs which many people need in order to live are also very costly and going higher all the time.

[Amish with an attitude]

Thanks Obama, and thanks establishment republican’s for not opposing 0bamacare.

“and you wonder why we don’t like you”

[steve86]

Yeah, quite aware of that and want none of it for myself.

[EGPWS]

Health insurance companies should know that it is VERY expensive for government to regulate every single aspect of every single person's life cradle to grave.

Even health care.

Then add politicians self promotion while in office and viola, trillions and trillions of unfunded liabilities dumped into several generations laps.

[The_Republic_Of_Maine]

Thanks, it is killing us. It’s not going to put us out of business, but, Donald cannot take office soon enough for us.

[Nailbiter]

I can imagine something besides despair.

Humans tend to get nasty when they are denied services do to political whims