A few weeks ago we gave you an overview of insurance rate review under Health Policy. Some states have the power to actually reject a premium increase. Others just have the power to sort of wag their fingers and look stern and hope the insurer is embarrassed into lowering the proposed hike.
The Affordable Care Act gave the federal Department of Health and Human Services the right to review rate requests of 10 percent or above, but not to set or roll back rates – basically enhanced finger-wagging power.
That post gave you state-specific tools to check what’s happening in your area, but we wanted to quickly bring you this additional resource, a Kaiser Family Foundation report called “Quantifying the Effects of Health Insurance Rate Review.” It too has a lot of state-by-state information for you.
It also found that one in five rate requests submitted to states were rolled back. On average “approved rate increases were 1.4 percentage points lower than insurers initially requested, a reduction of about one-fifth.” Also fewer insurers had proposed increases greater than 10 percent, meaning they stayed under the review threshold.
Joanne Kenen (@JoanneKenen) is AHCJ’s Health Policy topic leader. If you have questions or suggestions for future resources, please send them to joanne@healthjournalism.org.
