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By Dave Jones, California Insurance Commissioner
July 2, 2012 (Sacramento) -- The Supreme Court decision regarding the Affordable Care Act was good news for Californians. It means that Californians with health insurance will continue to enjoy the its benefits. Now we can move forward with reforms to provide health insurance to those without it.
There continues to be a major missing reform in the Affordable Care Act, however. There is still no authority to reject excessive health insurance and HMO rate hikes. And without this reform, rates for individuals, families, and businesses will keep climbing.
The deadline for County elections officials to certify that there are enough valid signatures to put our ballot initiative to reject excessive health insurance rate hikes on the November ballot has passed.
Unfortunately, the registrars in the 58 counties did not have enough time to complete the process for this November's election. Their projections, however, are that the ballot measure will qualify for the next general election ballot.
Enough signatures were collected (800,000!), but to provide more time to collect them, the petitions were turned in at the last possible moment. There were simply not enough resources or volunteers to collect the signatures faster and turn them in so that County elections officials could validate every single one in time for this November's election. We also faced competition in collecting signatures from other initiative campaigns with far greater resources.
I am disappointed that voters will not have a say over skyrocketing rate increases sooner rather than later. The future of healthcare reform depends on making health insurance rates more transparent, affordable and accountable. Having the authority to reject excessive rate increases will be all the more important when people are mandated to buy health insurance.
So, the hard work of gathering signatures was not in vain. The initiative to reject excessive rates will go to the voters in November 2014. We now have more time to build a grassroots campaign to counter the $100 million campaign that the insurers will wage against us.
There is still an opportunity to pass this reform this year. If the State Senate acts on Assembly Bill 52, it would provide the authority to reject excessive health insurance rate hikes. Please continue to call and email your State Senator and express your support for AB 52.
Thanks to those who have supported our efforts to reject excessive health insurance rate hikes. The initiative may not be in front of voters as soon as we had hoped, but we will continue to fight for this important piece of health care reform. We look forward to working with you between now and 2014 to do so. For more information about the ballot measure and how you can help, click here. Thank you.
Sincerely,
DAVE JONES
Insurance Commissioner
The views expressed in this editorial reflect the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of East County Magazine. To submit an editorial for consideration, contact editor@eastcountymagazine.org.
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