The always-exorbitant cost of health insurance is skyrocketing, in Pennsylvania and the United States at large.  And thanks to a variety of factors--increased healthcare costs (in large part driven by insurers’ refusal to pay what they once paid towards medical services), the expiration of Enhanced Premium Tax Credits (EPTCs) at the end of last year, the lack of affordable healthy food options available to our most vulnerable populations, cuts to essential government services, sheer corporate greed--health insurance rates for this year are expected to increase between 13% and 19%. That’s an amount that could absolutely gut families’ ability to pay for food, shelter, or utilities, let alone short-term or long-term health maintenance. Yet the funding formulas, pricing algorithms, and claim-handling metrics by which health insurance companies calculate their rates and the amounts per individual claim that consumers/insureds will be forced to pay remain a mystery to all but those entities.
 
Without any hint of transparency from insurance companies, there is simply no way for Pennsylvanians who must now, more than ever, shop around to best determine which insurance plans can best cover their needs at the best possible cost to make informed life-or-death decisions. Absent a public option on national scale, there is no market incentive for insurance companies to release this information. While the insurance industry claims that this information is a “trade secret” necessary for “competitive advantage,” “risk management,” and “maintaining stable, long-term solvency,” those concerns are and need to be secondary to the health and solvency of ordinary Pennsylvanians. As such, I will soon be introducing legislation to compel disclosure of all health insurance companies’ funding formulas in Pennsylvania, and I invite you to join me in co-sponsoring this legislation.