Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Laurel Brishel Prichard University of New Mexico/ Talk Radio News Service

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions confronted the issue of ever-rising premiums in the health insurance market and the possible need to enact legislation to block unjustified increases during a hearing Tuesday.

The absence of language specifically barring unfair increases in the health care reform legislation passed last month has prompted Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA.) to propose the Health Insurance Rate Authority Act, which would give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the ability to stop premium or other unjustifiable rate increases.

“Without further legislative action, I am concerned that health insurance companies will continue to do what they have done for far too long: put their profits ahead of people,” Feinstein, who appeared before the committee as a witness, said.

President and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Karen Ignagni, who also testified before the committee, stressed that the members of her association were “fully cognizant” of the burden that high insurance premiums place on Americans.

However, “Health care premiums are a symptom, not a cause,” Ignagni said.

Ignagni insisted that the rising cost of premiums is a result of the increase in the underlying costs of health care. According to Ignagni, in order to keep premiums in check, the government needs to look beyond the insurance market and into the health care fields to see why those cost have been elevated.

“That is what our advocacy in health care reform had been all about. We were very, very concerned [when] we saw costs exploding,” said Ignagni.