Reps. Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak have asked WellPoint Inc. President Angela Brady to testify at a hearing on individual health insurance prices Feb. 24.
Waxman, D-Calif., is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Stupak, D-Mich., is chairman of that committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee.
By Friday, Braly is supposed to send Waxman and Stupak internal communications and presentations relating to WellPoint's California individual health insurance rates and detailed tables showing how the prices and performance of individual California health products have changed over time.
WellPoint, Indianapolis (NYSE:WLP), has postponed a meeting with analysts to prepare for the hearing, but executives at the company say they welcome opportunities to explain why the rate increases they have announced are necessary.
WellPoint's Anthem Blue Cross division plans to change rates for about 800,000 individual health insurance plan members in California. In some cases, if members move up to older age categories and stick with the same plans, their rates could go up as much as 39%.
The rate changes were filed in November 2009, WellPoint says.
California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner drew attention to the proposed rate changes last week, by asking WellPoint to push back the original March 1 effective date to give an independent actuary time to analyze the changes. Poizner says he will block rate increases that appear to be unreasonable.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas insurance commissioner who butted heads with WellPoint while she was in Kansas, wrote to ask for more information about the rate changes and ask why such a profitable company could not do more to hold down rates.
Today, "all health plans are in the same situation in trying to deal with the steadily increasing medical costs in the delivery system, which are not sustainable," Brian Sassi, president of WellPoint's consumer business unit, says in a statement. "We need to refocus the health care reform debate toward steps that will improve quality and control the underlying medical costs, which is driving the high cost of coverage."
Sassi contends that the rate increases are "are actuarially sound and in full compliance with all requirements in the law."
WellPoint has to increase rates significantly for some plans because it is having a hard time getting healthy individuals to stick with those plans, Sassi says.
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For earlier coverage of this controversy, please see Sebelius, WellPoint Continue Battle Over California Rates and Massachusetts Imposes New Limits On Mass. Blue.
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