A new report by activists backing President Barack Obama's plan for health care reform says a few private health insurance companies have built "a near-monopoly" in Florida health insurance, burdening families and businesses with premiums that grew more than three times faster than wages from 2000 to 2007.
The study released today by Health Care for America Now, a national group representing more than 1000 organizations advocating health care reform, cited a 2007 American Medical Association report that shows Florida's two largest health insurers -- Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Aetna health insurance Inc. -- controlled a 45 percent share of the market.
A lack of competition "is bankrupting working familes and small businesses," said Justin Berrier, a researcher who contributed to the Health Care for American Now study.
According to the study, Blue Cross and Blue Shield along with UnitedHealth Group, Inc., controls 45 percent of the Orlando- Kissimmee market.
A spokeswoman for the insurance industry dismissed the request as politically motivated. "The specifics of these charges are pretty bogus," said Susan Pisano of America's Health Insurance Plans. Industry mergers have been exhaustively reviewed by regulators, she said, and insurers are not to blame for rising health care costs.
Separately, Health Care for America Now are asking the Justice Department to open a wide-ranging investigation of major insurers.
"A lack of antitrust enforcement has enabled insurers to acquire dominant positions in almost every metropolitan market," said the letter to the Justice Department, signed by Richard Kirsch, the group's director. "The failure to attack anticompetitive practices has enhanced the dominant positions of these insurers. This must be reversed."
The letter, dated Tuesday, asks the Justice Department to re-examine whether dozens of insurance company mergers in recent years have undermined competition, and to crack down on industry practices that allegedly infringe on the doctor-patient relationship.
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