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October 24, 2012 at 11:46 AM
A new health insurance rate increase review program created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) has had a bigger direct effect on rates on some states than on others.
Analysts at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation talk about the effects in an analysis of PPACA rate review program performance statistics.
The analysts looked at 798 individual and small group rate filing reviews that were handled by state officials, or by officials in the District of Columbia.
The rate review program may have skewed the results by scaring insurers away from filing some increase requests in the first place, or by persuading health insurers to reduce the size of the increase request below what they normally would have considered reasonably.
But the figures for the increase requests actually filed and reviewed show that the reviews cut the average rate change implemented to 5.4 percent, from an average change request of 6.8 percent.
The program
PPACA does not give state or federal regulators the authority to limit rate increases, but it does give HHS the authority to require health insurers to explain what HHS believes to be “unreasonable” rate increases on the Web.
HHS is now requiring insurers to justify increase requests of 10 percent or more.
