Double Digit Health Insurance Rate Hikes in New Hampshire
New Hampshire residents can expect to pay more for health insurance next year.
The Granite State’s two largest health insurance companies will raise rates between 11 to 14 percent. In 2017, the average health insurance rate increase for all Anthem plans on the marketplace is expected to be 13.9 percent, while the average for Harvard-Pilgrim is 11.1 percent, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported earlier this year.
For patients already stretching tight family budgets, those insurance rate hikes will be a heavy burden.
Patients Rising Perspective: Put Patients First
“It’s time to put patients first and make health care, medicines and treatment easy and accessible,” our co-founder and policy director Jonathan Wilcox writes in the New Hampshire Union Leader.
“There is no humane reason health insurers should be inhibiting the decisions of our doctors, and there is no excuse for denying vital medications while patients become sicker and their lives remain very literally in the balance.”
“How did the most vital medical decisions in your life go from the expert in the white coat to the bureaucrat in the gray flannel suit?”
New Hampshire Health Care: By the Numbers
Granite Staters say that the top health-care priorities for politicians and government officials should be managing premium increases, lowering co-pays and deductibles and holding insurance companies accountable.
According to a recently released survey from the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease:
- 49 percent of New Hampshire residents have seen their health-care costs increase
- Almost one-third of New Hampshire residents say coverage for them is not only getting more expensive, it’s actually getting worse
- 19 percent of New Hampshire residents say the treatment their doctor recommended wasn’t covered by insurance
- 21 percent of New Hampshire residents say the treatment of someone they know had the same problem.
- 89 percent of Granite Staters declared as very or somewhat important the need for transparency regarding how and why health plans are deciding to deny coverage of doctor-prescribed treatments
