High-Profile Ballot Measure Hopes To Curb Health Insurance Rate Hikes

In a California Healthline report by Kenny Goldberg, experts discussed an expensive and controversial November ballot measure that would give enforcement power to the state Insurance Commissioner to regulate health insurance rate hikes.

Currently, the commissioner reviews every rate increase, but doesn’t have the enforcement power to reject them. This measure would change that.

The bigger policy question, though, is whether or not that rate regulation enforcement power would successfully rein in rising health care costs and premiums.

The report includes comments from:

• Businesswoman Marti Conger from Benicia;
• Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, based in Santa Monica, which advanced the ballot measure;
• R. Adams Dudley, professor of health policy of UC-San Francisco;
• Physician Ted Mazer, speaker of the House of Delegates for the California Medical Association;
• Dylan Roby, director of health economics at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research; and
• Robin Swanson, spokeswoman for Californians Against Higher Health Care Costs, which opposes the ballot measure.

You can download a PDF of this report (Goldberg, California Healthline, 5/14/14).

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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