Coming to a health insurance premium near you

I did not like the headline this morning: health insurance premiums may go up by 20 percent here in Connecticut, where I live. If you don't live here, don't count your blessings.

Matthew Sturdevant reports in The Hartford Courant:

The overall price shift is the clearest indicator yet of what customers and employers can expect when health insurers submit proposed 2011 rates in late October and November. The current round of price requests launches a clash between insurers who say the increases are justified and consumer advocates and government officials who say the numbers are wildly inflated.

Indeed officials at the federal and state level jumped on their high horses to express outrage, but the insurance companies point to specifics in the new law. Anthem, with which we have a policy, says:

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut, by far the largest insurer of Connecticut residents, said in a letter that it expects the federal health reform law to increase rates by as much as 22.9 percent for just a single provision — removing annual spending caps. The mandate to provide benefits to children regardless of pre-existing conditions will raise premiums by 4.8 percent, Anthem said in the letter. Mandated preventive care with no deductibles would raise rates by as much as 8.5 percent, Anthem said.

On Sept. 23, health insurers will be required to comply with an array of provisions that were part of federal health reform laws passed six months ago. New regulations include eliminating cash limits on how much insurers pay per person each year, and throughout a person's lifetime. Insurers won't be able to deny coverage to children under 19 who have a pre-existing medical condition.

"If you fail to recognize that the new requirements around benefits that were passed in federal reform were going to drive price, I think you're being intellectually irresponsible," said Keith Stover, a lobbyist with the Connecticut Association of Health Plans. "Those are new benefits that are going to cost money," Stover said. "You can't just wave the magic wand and say, 'Do all these things, and they're free.' It just doesn't work that way."

I'm no fan of the insurance companies, but I think he has a point.