Anthem Blue Cross is raising rates on thousands of their older individual customers who have insurance policies, unaffected by the Affordable Care Act. These premium increases are as high as 25%. These increases, are scheduled to go into effect on April 1. This date is appropriate since the insurance company mistreating its customers and continue to subject them to the arbitrary dictates and multiple coverage exclusions utilized to unfairly exclude to fully cover appropriate medical care. Even after the insured’s extremely high annual insurance deductibles have been met.

These policies, have been grandfathered because they were purchased before the Federal Health Care Law was enacted in 2010. As a result, there are not shielded from significant rate hikes.

Anthem Blue Cross claims that these rates reflect the escalating healthcare costs which are supposedly an economic reality industry wide. However, recently published statistics regarding healthcare costs, indicate a decline across the board, since the Affordable Healthcare Act went into effect, in recent months. State regulators have accused healthcare insurers of exaggerating what they expect to pay for patient’s future medical care costs in order to support these exorbitant rate increases. Overall, U. S. Healthcare spending has been growing at less than 4% annually in recent years which is the lowest growth rate in more than 50 years.

Comments filed with regulators by the California Public Interest Research Group Education Fund question why Anthem Blue Cross was raising these premiums so high in excess of medical inflation. These proposed rate increase, appear to have no adequate justification.

California State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has previously accused Anthem Blue Cross of unreasonable increases when they raised their rates only 10% on some of their customers, covered by other grandfathered policies.

A current initiative, on the November ballot seeks to provide the California Insurance Commissioner with the power to deny excessive increases for healthcare coverage. At the present time, he does not have the authority to reject these rate increases regardless of how exorbitant or unfair they might be. If the Insurance Commissioner is unable to take action under these circumstances, Anthem Blue Cross and the other healthcare insurance providers holding these grandfathered insurance policies, will continue to increase their premiums until they price their customers out of the market forcing them to purchase alternative policies which may be substantially inferior to the coverage and care that they have long been accustom to receiving from the physicians of their choice.