Today I got a letter in the mail from my health care “provider” CDPHP notifying me of a proposed 25% increase to my premium for 2023.
According to the letter, the costs of healthcare are rising rapidly and they have no choice but to increase their premiums.
Yet, when I googled “healthcare inflation in the USA” the first report I found from PWC indicated that costs are rising by only 7% this year, far cry from the 25% increase my non-profit insurer deems necessary.
So who’s numbers are correct?
The letter provides notice of my right to leave a comment on the proposed increase to the Department of Financial Services of New York State.
This is the link to provide comments https://myportal.dfs.ny.gov/web/prior-approval/submit-a-comment and this is the comment I submitted:
Hello, Today I received a notification in the mail from CDPHP of a proposed 25.1% increase to my health insurance premium. That high of an increase seems extreme to me, especially as I am on a very high-deductible plan that is unlikely to cost CDPHP any money at all. The deductible on my catastrophic tier health-insurance plan is $8,000. CDPHP is not paying any of my medical costs unless something extreme happens to me. Has CDPHP demonstrated that emergency medical services costs have increased by more than 25% this year? In their letter to me, CDPHP justifies the increase based on the rising cost of healthcare in general. Yet, according to this report by PWC, medical costs are rising by 6.5% in 2022, down slightly from 7% last year. https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/health-industries/library/behind-the-numbers.html#:~:text=Where%20is%20the%20medical%20cost,was%20between%202016%20and%202020. So, who's numbers are accurate? Are medical costs in America increasing by 7% or by 25%? I would appreciate if the DFS would press insurance companies to justify their proposed rate-hikes with unbiased data and to push back against rising premiums in general. As a young, health American with no children or spouse, the health insurance equation already makes little sense. On an individual basis my ongoing health costs are low. My health insurance premiums represent the bulk of my healthcare costs in any given year. Rising premiums on catastrophic level plans are likely to push people in my situation away from being insured as the equation balances towards self-insurance or just swallowing the risk of catastrophic injury. Price hikes like these will push more young healthy Americans to roll the dice and go without health insurance, removing themselves from the risk-pool, and making it even more expensive for insurers to offer coverage. It's a vicious cycle that starts with the insurers raising premiums at extreme rates. Every individual insurer is incentivized to hike rates as much as they can to fund higher salaries for their executives and increase shareholder returns. Greed is incentivized and expected in this scenario, unless regulators like the DFS provide oversight and curtail them. I would ask the DFS to take a leadership roll in curtailing the rising cost of health insurance and prevent these double digit rate hikes. Thank you for considering my comments in your process. All the best, Anthony Castrio
I’d like to spend more time figure out how much costs are really going up, why, and where that money is going to.
For now, I’ll content myself with this comment.
I’m sure the insurance company would rather not hear from me at all and that’s exactly why I took the time to write this.
