To: Oregon Insurance Commissioner Laura Cali
Oregon Insurance Commissioner: Please scrutinize proposed health care rates
OSPIRG
With all of the changes underway in health care in Oregon, it's more important than ever to hold health insurers accountable for providing coverage at reasonable rates.
Consumers are counting on you to stand up for them. Please take out your red pens and scrutinize rate hike proposals carefully to make sure that every penny is justified.
Consumers are counting on you to stand up for them. Please take out your red pens and scrutinize rate hike proposals carefully to make sure that every penny is justified.
Why is this important?
Oregon’s health insurers must get permission from state officials before they can raise premiums on individuals and small businesses. For several years, OSPIRG Foundation has put a magnifying glass to premium hike proposals, and thousands of OSPIRG members have emailed and called the state’s Insurance Division. All this additional scrutiny has helped cut over $155 million in waste from health insurance premiums since 2010.
Now, we've dug into the latest rate hike proposals from four of Oregon’s top insurers. None of them has done enough to justify the prices they’ve proposed.
• Moda is proposing a 12.5% rate hike on over 95,000 Oregonians, without outlining a plan for passing along cost savings from health reform to their members.
• PacificSource, which initially proposed a 15.9% increase, has already admitted that their proposal was based on errors that would have overcharged their customers. They revealed the mistake only after it became clear that the original proposal was more expensive than many other health plans – such as Providence, which is proposing a 16% decrease in premiums for identical coverage.
• Health Net and United are paying more for emergency room visits than many other insurers, yet they are both proposing big rate increases without demonstrating that they are doing all they can to reduce these costs and keep their members out of the ER.
With study after study showing that one-third of health care spending is waste, we can’t afford anything but a full-court press for more effective use of our health care dollars.
Now, we've dug into the latest rate hike proposals from four of Oregon’s top insurers. None of them has done enough to justify the prices they’ve proposed.
• Moda is proposing a 12.5% rate hike on over 95,000 Oregonians, without outlining a plan for passing along cost savings from health reform to their members.
• PacificSource, which initially proposed a 15.9% increase, has already admitted that their proposal was based on errors that would have overcharged their customers. They revealed the mistake only after it became clear that the original proposal was more expensive than many other health plans – such as Providence, which is proposing a 16% decrease in premiums for identical coverage.
• Health Net and United are paying more for emergency room visits than many other insurers, yet they are both proposing big rate increases without demonstrating that they are doing all they can to reduce these costs and keep their members out of the ER.
With study after study showing that one-third of health care spending is waste, we can’t afford anything but a full-court press for more effective use of our health care dollars.