Interesting that you should bring this up today. My small group just renewed Aetna for another year. But I had similar experience. The plan that most employees were on was discontinued and replaced with a plan with lower coverage, a higher co-pay and a 35% increase in premiums. We changed to a partially self-insured plan combined with a high deductible plan to cover the excess.
Unfortunately, this years increase was not exceptional. It follows last year’s increase of 35%. It was the 6th time since 2003 that annual increases were 25% or higher, the 3rd time the increases were more than 30%.
We had a $15 co-pay policy. Changing to a $40 co-pay policy, the premiums would still have been 9% higher than the previous policy. Even with the change to the partially self-insured plan, my premium rates are now 332% of what they were in 2002.
None of the parts of the new law which may help stabalize rates have taken effect, and won’t for a couple more years. But if HCR had any effect on this rate increase, it was only to gouge us as much as they can before the new law takes effect. But given what has happened over the last 10 years, it’s hard to prove HCR has had any effect at all. They get what they can, when they can.
