Rep. Bolinsky: Make your voice heard on health insurance rate hikes!
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
The Connecticut Insurance Department is considering substantial proposed rate increases for individual and small group (for employers with 50 or fewer workers) insurance markets. The average of the proposed rate increases is 20% which is well above what I consider reasonable, especially with inflation at a 40-year-high and high prices of food, services and energy already taking too much money out of your wallet.
Nine health insurance providers covering approximately 206,000 people have filed for increases. The filings are for both the state-sponsored health insurance exchange, Access Health CT, and off-exchange plans. The insurers cite several factors for the increases, including healthcare trends, the impacts of Covid-19, legislative actions, and the discontinuance of federal ARPA money.
According to the Insurance Department:
- The proposed average individual rate request is a 20.4 percent increase, compared to 8.6 percent in 2022 and ranges from 8.6 percent to 25.2 percent.
- The proposed average small group rate request is a 14.8 percent increase, compared to 12.9 percent in 2022 and ranges from 3.6 percent to 29.3 percent.
Public comment period is open for another two weeks and, it’s critical that any and all consumers who will be adversely affected let our regulators know they’d like to contest these large increases at this time of extraordinary inflation on the staples of everyday life.
Comments can be filed online, or by clicking the button below.
If your insurer is one of the nine carriers in Connecticut requesting regulatory approval for substantial premium increases, please, do not be silent. The link above is easy-to-use and will help you confirm if your insurer is requesting an unreasonable increase and allow you to access and submit a comment to the CT Department of Insurance. This is your chance to weigh-in and inform the regulators how this will affect you and if to object or support their increase.
As always, please contact me should you have any questions about this important issue or concerns on any other topics relating to state government at Mitch.Bolinsky@housegop.ct.gov or at (800) 842-1423.