Health insurance bill moves ahead
The last surviving bill proposing to reinstate health insurance rate regulation this year is advancing in the state Legislature, with approval from only one more committee needed before a full House vote.
The House Consumer Protection Committee yesterday passed the Senate version of the bill yesterday, which now moves to the House Finance Committee.
At least seven health insurance oversight bills were proposed this session to give the state insurance commissioner broad power over rates, but only one of the measures is still alive.
Yesterday's vote came a day after the Hawaii Medical Service Association publicly released the salaries of its top executives, as Rep. Josh Green, (D, Keauhou-Honokohau), was set to disclose the salaries in a bid to rally votes for the oversight bill.
"What we have is a nonprofit health insurance giant with $2 billion a year in revenue paying its executives gigantic bonuses with no oversight," said Green, House Health Committee chairman.
But Mike Stollar, HMSA vice president of corporate communications, says the insurer has been submitting the salaries of its top executives to the state insurance commissioner for the past several years, both with and without rate regulation.
The last rate-regulation law went into effect in January 2003, but expired last June after lawmakers failed to reinstate it.