Survey Finds Jump in Health Insurance Cost for Individuals
By REED ABELSON
NYT
Even as the nation was debating whether to overhaul the health insurance market, people who were buying coverage on their own were experiencing sharp increases in the cost of their policies, according to a survey released Monday.
Those surveyed said they were faced with premium increases averaging 20 percent when they last sought to renew their coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health policy research group, which conducted the survey in March and early April.
While some people switched to less expensive plans that offered less generous coverage, and others negotiated lower prices than their insurers initially requested, the people surveyed still reported an average increase of 13 percent on their health insurance costs.
Just how steep the increases have been in the market for individual insurance has been an open question since earlier this year, when Anthem Blue Cross tried to raise its rates by as much as 39 percent in California. The proposed increases were met with outrage from federal and state officials, but there was little information about how widespread such increases were in other parts of the country. Anthem, which is owned by WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest insurers, later withdrew its request to raise rates.
(More here.)
NYT
Even as the nation was debating whether to overhaul the health insurance market, people who were buying coverage on their own were experiencing sharp increases in the cost of their policies, according to a survey released Monday.
Those surveyed said they were faced with premium increases averaging 20 percent when they last sought to renew their coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health policy research group, which conducted the survey in March and early April.
While some people switched to less expensive plans that offered less generous coverage, and others negotiated lower prices than their insurers initially requested, the people surveyed still reported an average increase of 13 percent on their health insurance costs.
Just how steep the increases have been in the market for individual insurance has been an open question since earlier this year, when Anthem Blue Cross tried to raise its rates by as much as 39 percent in California. The proposed increases were met with outrage from federal and state officials, but there was little information about how widespread such increases were in other parts of the country. Anthem, which is owned by WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest insurers, later withdrew its request to raise rates.
(More here.)
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