By Bruce Japsen | The parent of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois has been summoned with other health insurance giants to Washington next week to discuss premium increases with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The letter to Chicago-based Health Care Service Corp., disclosed on the agency’s Web site, comes as the Obama administration steps up scrutiny of health insurance company premium increases. One idea floated by Obama will be to create a national insurance director with the ability to cap rate increases.
Double-digit percentage rate increases were a key part of today’s
bipartisan health reform summit led by President Barack Obama in
Washington. Congress is grappling with a way to cover 30 million
uninsured Americans.
“We have learned of premium increases of nearly 40 percent in one
state, and we know significant premium increases are not isolated
instances,” Sebelius said in her letter to Health Care Service and four
other companies. “I am concerned about these increases, which make it
harder for people to access the health care they need, and eager to
hear the justification for these increases and steps we can take to
create a more stable system that keeps premium costs down for all
Americans. I hope this meeting will provide an opportunity to discuss
how health insurance reform can bring down health care costs and fix
our broken health insurance system.”
The letter was sent to Patricia Hemingway Hall, chief executive of
Health Care Service, parent of Blue Cross plans in Illinois, Texas,
Oklahoma and New Mexico. Health Care Service is the nation’s
fourth-largest health insurer plan with 12.5 million health plan
members.
CEOs of WellPoint Inc., Aetna Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Cigna Corp.
also were requested to attend the meeting, scheduled for Wednesday,
March 3. Spikes in health premiums at insurance companies have drawn
fire after WellPoint’s California-based Anthem Blue Cross unit recently
disclosed rate increases of nearly 40 percent for about 700,000
individual customers.
Health Care Service told the Tribune this week its rate increase on
individual and small group businesses have been 10 percent on average
for 2010. Health Care Service could not be reached for comment on the
Sebelius letter.
Those kind of increases are outrageous under any circumstances. What I’d like to know is, if the insurance companies are claiming it’s necessary because of the increased cost of healthcare, why is nobody trying to find out what in healthcare is costing so much more, and why? Seems to me there’s either wide-spread fraud or price manipulation, or both, going on.
The reason why health care is increasing is pretty simple. Americans are fat and lazy. 1.3 trillion dollars of health care annually is spent on chronic diseases that are led by behavioral choices. Diabetes, Heart conditions, COPD, etc Outlaw fast food and Smoking and health care costs will go down
We have BCBS/New Mexico and they’ve socked us with a 23 percent increase for two consecutive years. We went from around $700 two years ago to nearly $1200 a month for two people starting April 1. All this during a recession. How is any small business expected to grow the economy with unjustified rate increases like these? We truly are living in the Corporate States of America.
The reason why health care is increasing is pretty simple. Americans are fat and lazy. 1.3 trillion dollars of health care annually is spent on chronic diseases that are led by behavioral choices. Diabetes, Heart conditions, COPD, etc Outlaw fast food and Smoking and health care costs will go down