Dive Brief:
- A recent lawsuit filed by a consumer advocacy group in Missouri is claiming that the Department of Health and Human Services is not following through on its obligation to make insurance rate filings public in time for comment, a task mandated by the Affordable Care Act.
- In states like Missouri, where insurers are not required to file health insurance rates to the state or make them available to the public, residents rely on getting access to this information from HHS. The lawsuit was filed by Mehri & Skalet attorney Jay Angoff, who formerly oversaw implementation of the ACA for HHS.
- HHS spokesperson Ben Wakana told the Washington Post that the department has the goal of ensuring the information is available to consumers in a manner that is timely enough to make informed purchase decisions.
Dive Insight:
Many state insurance offices review annual rate proposals, but in a handful, like Missouri, HHS performs the reviews. The department has yet to file any information for the 2015 health plans, according to the suit. A Freedom of Information Act was filed on August 20, to which HHS did not respond.
"Allowing the public to see not just the rate itself but the justification, the assumption companies make on which the rate is based, is something that can only have a pro-competitive effect in the market," Angoff, a former insurance regulator in Missouri, told the Washington Post. "The only way those rates are likely to come down is if the rate filing justifications are made public."
