Healthfirst Insurance Company, Inc. Individual 2022 Public ...

Healthfirst Insurance Company, Inc. Individual 2022 Public Comments

I was just informed that HealthFirst has filed with DFS to raise the monthly insurance premiums by 14%. In a covid landscape, this is reprehensible. The majority of small business have be devastated by Covid. If anything, we need our health insurance costs to go down or stay the same, not raise them. With inflation kicking in and prices going for basics like food, health insurance costs should remain flat or decrease, not increase.

I received a notice that my insurance plan with HealthFirst Insurance Company, Inc. is filing a request for a 35.4% change to my premium. My plan is HealthFirst Gold Total EPO and I have individual coverage. My HIOS number is 61405NY0020007. This sort of increase is not okay. That's an absurd increase. That will make it unaffordable for me to partake in the plan and it's the only plan out there after many months of research that suits my requirements and the network that we need. Please do not allow this to happen. It is not right and would mean taking away an essential part of our wellbeing.

Its hard enough to find a plan that has coverage and available doctors, the cost is already one of the largest monthly expenses that I have pay. It is ABSURD that the price will increase the proposed 35.4% that would mean an additional $2600 per year on top of a $7500 expense that I am afraid to utilize because of the additional bills the occur from EACH visit. Insurance and medical costs are FAR TOO EXPENSIVE FOR ANY INDIVIDUAL. Please deny the request for this money hungry industry to feed off individuals any further and please help support those in need by reducing the rates further. Thank you

I do not think the rate increase should happen. As a self employed person finding health insurance is so difficult, I have pre-existing conditions and need to be covered. Every year the premiums go up and I have to find a new provider my doctor is in network with. A 35% increase seems incredibly unfair when I'm already paying over $600 a month for the Bronze level of the plans. Please do not approve this rate change.

Greetings - I would like to note my objection the HealthFirsts request to increase insurance premiums by 35.4% in 2022. In a year following a pandemic, historic financial difficulty for many New Yorkers and increasing consumer goods prices, it is outrageous that this company would be requesting to raise costs to this extent. At most, the company should be requesting a premium increase in-line with inflation. NY'ers cannot afford their premiums, and more of us will lose our coverage if Premium Rate changes like this are approved. The Biden relief bill finally gave us a bit of breaking room to pay our healthcare bills. Please don't take that away from us! Many thanks,

A 35% increase in premiums is an outrageous, and transparent grab for profit by this provider. Of course, their costs did not go up that much in one year. This is an attempt to squeeze more out of the system, and the people who depend on this coverage to live. I hope that this request is summarily rejected.

Healthfirst Insurance Company, Inc. Individual 2022 Public Comments

Since joining a HealthFirst plan in 2018, the cumulative increases have been more than 25%. They are now requesting a 35.4% increase in premium for 2022. There seems to be insufficient justification for such a substantial increase. According to a recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute, the cost of healthcare is anticipated to rise only 6.5% more than in 2021. The NY exchange plans will become impractically expense for those will moderate incomes. I ask that this be taken into consideration before allowing an increase as extraordinary as 35.4$.

I do not feel like my rate should be raised 35.4%. Healthfirst is already very expensive even at the Bronze level, and the the increased rate will not provide more services for the cost. I have not increased my use of the insurance, and in fact avoid using it because of risk of raising my rate. It feels very predatory to be raising insurance rates at the end of a global pandemic, Healthfirst should feel ashamed for proposing a rate increase at this time.

The requested increase of 35.4% is outrageous! If I read their application correctly, there are only 202 people on this plan while the Group plan only has an increase of 16% (which is also 5x the current rate of inflation). This clearly discriminates against independent workers who have no bargaining power whatsoever. Further, this would increase my monthly premium to >$1000/month in the waning years of my career on the back of a pandemic-driven business downturn. They need to find ways to save money in their operations instead of just passing on the costs of their poor management to their subscribers. Please do not approve this rate increase. I already pay $9000/year and cannot/should not pay more.

A 35.4% increase in healthcare premiums is outrageous, unethical, and totally unaffordable. Every year premiums go up, and every year I have to change plans, and consequently, providers, in an effort to try to keep my health insurance costs at bay. There is no other business that would dare to increase already sky high costs by such a huge percentage. This is a huge part of so much else that is terribly wrong with our healthcare system. I myself am a healthcare provider with my own practice, and the reimbursement from my own plan would be too low for me to be profitable if I took my own personal health insurance! With plans like these, I lose out as a member - paying high costs for little coverage - and also as a provider, receiving laughably low payments for the services I provide my patients. The system is broken. Yet it continues every year. If (or rather *when*) my premium increases by 35.4% for next year, I'll just switch plans again come 2022. Our healthcare system is broken.

Good day, The proposed premium rate change of nearly 31% by Healthfirst is unconscionable. It bewilders the mind how an organization can seek to increase premiums for plans which are woefully lacking. We pay nearly a $1000 a month for the 'privilege' of having to satisfy a $5600 deductible per person or $11,200 per family. Nearly ever facet of care requires us to meet the deductible prior to 50% co-sharing. This is wholesale extortion from a company which made 11.4 Billion in 2019. I humble request DFS disapprove the rate request.

Healthfirst Insurance Company, Inc. Individual 2022 Public Comments

In mid-June I received a letter from Healthfirst notifying my partner and I of a proposed rate change that would increase our premiums by 35.4%. This is, frankly, an untenable suggestion. Among other things, the letter notes that the rate hike is due because of the cost of physician services - something of which we have been unable to avail ourselves, given that three consecutive PCPs assigned to us have stopped taking this insurance at all in the last 18 months. Despite being in relative good health, my partner and I currently pay more for health insurance than we do in rent - which, in New York, is saying something - and the pandemic has affected our finances, just as I imagine it would have affected the finances of all New Yorkers using this insurance plan rather than a more prestigious one. The idea that in the wake of the pandemic we would have to pay 35.4% more than our current rate, for a network that has been utterly abandoned by any of the doctors we have existing relationships with, is a laughable suggestion. Please refuse this rate hike. The New Yorkers who had to settle for this subpar plan are already paying too much for it; they (and we) cannot pay any more.

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