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Truth and Consequences — Insurance-Premium Rate Regulation and the ACA

List of authors.
  • Ann Mills, M.Sc., M.B.A.,
  • Carolyn L. Engelhard, M.P.A.,
  • and Patricia M. Tereskerz, J.D., Ph.D.

Over the past decade, the largest health insurance companies have seen a disproportionate increase in profits of 250%, or 10 times the rate of inflation. During the past year alone, there has been a double-digit increase in health insurance premiums.1 In response to such increases, the new health care reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Affordable Care Act,” or ACA), requires the secretary of health and human services, along with individual states, to establish a process for the annual review of unreasonable increases in health insurance premiums. As a result of the new statutory language, the Department . . .

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Funding and Disclosures

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.

This article (10.1056/NEJMp1006344) was published on July 21, 2010, at NEJM.org.

Author Affiliations

From the Program in Ethics and Policy in Healthcare Systems, Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities (A.M., P.M.T.), and the Department of Public Health Sciences (C.L.E.), University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville.

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