Word: californiaisms
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Bigelow was raised in Northern California. Her father managed a paint factory, and her mother was a librarian. Bigelow began painting at an early age; she enrolled as a college student at the San Francisco Art Institute and during her second year was accepted at the Whitney Museum of American Art's independent-study program. In 1971, at age 19, she set off for New York City...
Well, actually, rate hikes from Anthem Blue Cross, a for-profit company, will probably still happen, according to actuaries and other experts with extensive knowledge of the individual health insurance market, in which the company operates. The best that Anthem Blue Cross customers in California can probably hope for, say these experts, is that the rate hikes will be less dramatic than what the company first proposed. (See "What Health Care Reform Really Means...
...From what I know about California regulations and rules, [Anthem's proposed rates] probably will meet the letter of the law," says Marian Mulkey, a senior program officer at the California Health Care Foundation, which studies the state's health-insurance market, among other topics...
Despite the fact that the state has some of the strongest consumer-protection laws in the country, California's regulations governing the individual health insurance market are not very strict. Insurers are free to set whatever rates they want, so long as they spend 70% of premiums paying claims, a threshold that's lower, for example, than those in Washington, New York and New Jersey. California is also what's known as a "file and use state," meaning insurers can increase rates in the individual market without state approval. The state can later act to rein in rates or revoke...
...Anthem Blue Cross will likely be able to proceed with its massive rate hikes is the fact that these kinds of increases are nothing new. The company made news for similar double-digit spikes in 2005, for example, and a recent study found that average individual insurance premiums in California increased 23% between 2002 and 2006, even as the actuarial value of these plans dropped considerably. (This means consumers are paying more for less coverage than before...