3 big health insurers stockpile $2.4 billion as rates keep rising

[Newsjock]

Source: Seattle Times

... Nonprofit health-insurance companies in Washington don't have shareholders. But they are facing demands for the $2.4 billion they've amassed while handing steep rate hikes to customers.

State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler is again asking lawmakers to give him the power to consider a nonprofit health insurer's surplus before he agrees to any rate increase.

A bill that would give him that power is making its way through the Legislature.

Washington's three largest insurers — Premera Blue Cross, Regence BlueShield and Group Health Cooperative — are nonprofit. And, says Kreidler, they've all raised premiums steeply for individual and small-group policies while together collecting a considerable cache.

Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017460805_surplus09m.html

[mmonk]

1. Freedom!

[Fumesucker]

3. Just another word..

[mmonk]

7. For nothing left to lose.

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[CAPHAVOC]

4. They are not "insurors".

Health payment plans. This mess in no way resembles insurance anymore. To call the receipts premiums is a plus ultra stretch.

[Scuba]

5. Using our precious healthcare dollars to fatten the bank accounts of investors in London, Tokyo...

... and Hong Kong isn't just bad economic policy, it's immoral.

[sarcasmo]

6. The health industry this country has is just plain wrong.

It's not health care, it's a health industry that makes billions off of the people who need care.

[PSPS]

8. They figure they'll need it to keep buying laws and legislators