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...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...
...state approval. The state can later act to rein in rates or revoke an insurer's license, but this rarely happens. Most states, on the other hand, are "prior approval states," in which insurers need state permission to increase rates in the market. (See the top 10 jarring health care reform...
Regardless of what actually happens with Anthem Blue Cross's rate increases, the news has served as a useful tool for an Administration now making perhaps its hardest and last push for federal health care reform. After the Los Angeles Times broke the Anthem Blue Cross story, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius lambasted the company. First she publicly asked it to justify the increases, and when the company offered a five-page explanation, she responded by saying, "It remains difficult to understand how a company that made $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone can justify...
...after launching his new Twitter feed, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs used the tool to link to news coverage about the Anthem Blue Cross kerfuffle. "BIG insurance rate increases and MORE coming," wrote Gibbs, who said that such increases would serve as the "backdrop" for a bipartisan health care summit scheduled for Feb. 25. There, the Democrats will argue that without a massive, federal overhaul of the health care system and insurance market, costs will continue to rise dramatically and unpredictably for consumers. In addition, Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has launched...