It's summer, officially the time for health insurance companies to jack up individual health insurance premiums by double digits. Such is the case of Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon, about to increase their never ending shrinking health care coverage by 22.1% on average:
Concerns about surging health care costs drove more than 150 people Thursday to hear Oregon's largest health insurer defend its request to raise premiums an average 22 percent.
In the Oregon Insurance Division's first public hearing for a rate request in more than 20 years, administrator Teresa Miller grilled the president of Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon.
Then Laura Etherton, a health policy advocate for the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, urged the division to reject the request.
"It is not justified, and it will only make matters worse," she said.
BlueCross sticks it to the self-employed or any other small business buying individual policies every year, with a never ending shrinking pool of customers, now down to 59,447. They used to cover over 100,000 in Oregon but clearly people are dropping out because they cannot afford the premiums. Even with health insurance, these individual policies do not provide enough coverage.
Recent comments