Report: Utah lacks protection for insured
Monday, June 9, 2008
Utah's patchwork of laws don't do a good job of protecting consumers who buy their own health insurance, a new report says.
Utahns who have individual, commercial plans - about 5 percent of the population - are vulnerable to being charged exorbitant premiums and having their policies revoked without warning, according to Families USA.
Still others may have difficulty getting insured at all, due to pre-existing medical conditions.
The nonprofit consumer health care advocacy group, which surveyed all state departments of insurance and high-risk pool administrators between March and April 2008, found that Utah and other states largely leave consumers to fend for
themselves.
"The individual health insurance market is still the wild, Wild West for America's health care consumers," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. "It is a market with many abuses and with far too few state-level consumer protections."
But Tanji Northrup, senior health analyst for the Utah Insurance Department, said the state plays an effe
ctive watchdog role. The problem, she said, is keeping premiums for individual plans affordable.
"The more protections that are passed via mandates . . . the more costly the insurance can become," she said.
Insurers, the report said, can refuse to sell plans to Utahns based
Source :http://www.sltrib.com |
