I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico attorney Paul Bardacke spent much of his time at last week’s Division of Insurance hearing on his client’s latest health insurance rate hike attacking Allan Schwartz, the Attorney General’s office’s independent expert who testified Blue Cross had exaggerated its losses.
But Bardacke may have inadvertently bolstered Schwartz’s credibility, when he pointed out that Schwartz’s calculations of Blue Cross’s loss rates over recent years differed from both Blue Cross and Division staff calculations.
To Bardacke’s evident surprise and some policyholders’ delight, it was actually Schwartz’s calculations that were correct, Division Chief Actuary Tom Bowling subsequently acknowledged.
“There is a typo,” Bowling said. “Schwartz is right.”
Recent earnings statements from Health Care Services Corporation (HCSC), of which Blue Cross Blue Shield New Mexico is a division, show the firm has accumulated $7.2 billion in surplus reserves — enough to absorb the claimed losses cited to justify the rate hike for more than 1,000 years, one policyholder pointed out after the hearing.
Despite a seven-year string of rate increases on New Mexico policyholders, the firm has not curbed executive compensation, officials testified at the hearing.
Top individual HSCS executives’ bonus pay for 2007, 2008 and 2009 well exceeded the company’s claimed $20 million loss over those three years on New Mexico health insurance policies. In 2008 alone, HCSC’s CEO and a company vice president took home nearly $20 million in bonuses, for example.
State Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, has called for an independent analysis of the Blue Cross rate filing, but state Superintendent of Insurance John Franchini told The Independent no such review would occur in the current case.
Franchini encountered skepticism among policyholders at the hearing when he insisted they must “trust” insurance companies and regulators.
California regulators’ order for independent analyses of Blue Cross and Aetna rate filings earlier this year led to the identification of typos and calculation errors that prompted both companies to withdraw their requests for rate hikes in that state. The errors led to calls among California legislators for stronger regulatory oversight of health insurance rates.
