By Anthony Wright
Health Access California
Last week, Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones announced he was declaring Aetna’s recent quarterly health insurance rate increase for small employers as “unreasonable.”
This is notable as the first *formal* finding of an “unreasonable” rate hike by the Department of Insurance for health insurance rate increases under the Affordable Care Act and companion implementing state legislation, SB 1163 (Leno).
To be clear, this wasn’t the first time that insurers filed unreasonable rate hikes–it is the first time that a health insurer refused to reduce or retract a proposed rate increase at the request of the Insurance Commissioner. The Department of Managed Health Care, which has also been negotiating rates with insurers, did declare an Anthem Blue Cross rate hike as unreasonable last year.