Ahead of the government sponsored health care reform bill, which will soon go into effect and will offer coverage to millions without, President Barack Obama has warned health insurers about raising their rates.
The President sent a direct message to executives from some of the nation’s largest health insurers that raising rates in the wake of the government sponsored health care plan was not going to be tolerated.
After meeting with executives from some of the nations leading health insurers President Obama remarked, “Insurance companies … shouldn’t see it as an opportunity to enact unjustifiable rate increases.”
The chief executive offers from Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente and Cigna Corp attended the ninety-minute meeting with President Obama who stated that insurers would need to publicly justify any rate increase via their website as well as the federal health website.
In a statement released after the meeting Scott Serota the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association President and CEO remarked, “”Underlying health care costs and current economic conditions are driving increases in health insurance premiums.”
President Obama’s administration also released new regulations today outlining new consumer protections that will take effect in September and said that those regulations “will put an end to some of the worst practices in the health insurance industry and put in place the strongest consumer protections in our history.”
Because of the new regulations which President Obama has referred to as a “Patient Bill of Rights” U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that the administration had estimated rates would rise less than one percent.
Making sure that the public understood that the government wasn’t trying to put health insurers out of business Sebelius said, “While we want solvent insurance companies and we want to make sure that the private market is stable, we also want to make sure consumers are protected against excessive rate increases.”