According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, health insurance companies in Arizona are pursuing double-digit premium increases for more than 30 insurance health plans in the state.

Officials from AARP Arizona are weighing-in with the Arizona Department of Insurance on the transparency of health insurance plan rate reviews.  The department is currently reviewing the process for rate reviews of health insurance plans.  AARP believes consumers should have the opportunity to be more engaged in the process.

“AARP welcomes the opportunity to work with the Arizona Department of Insurance on this very important issue,” said David Mitchell, AARP Arizona State Director. “We are supporting three key points that we hope will be included in the review process.”

AARP would like to see proposed rate increases posted online for public comment before the rate increases are considered “reasonable or unreasonable,” and that policyholders are notified of potential rate increases before they are classified as such.

“We also think it’s important that press releases are issued informing the public of the opportunity to give public comment whenever a significant premium increase for Arizonans is considered by the Department of Insurance,” said Mitchell.

In addition, AARP supports the adoption of an alert system similar to that which the state of Minnesota currently uses. “We believe policyholders should be allowed to enroll in an alert system that automatically indicates when rate hikes are submitted for review by the department,” Mitchell added. “We think informing policyholders is not only important, but that the notices should be easy to understand, state the implications of the increase and what options are available to policyholders.”

The Arizona Department of Insurance is currently gathering comments from various stakeholder groups on this issue.  “AARP strongly supports the opportunity for consumers to be active participants in the insurance market and we applaud the Arizona Department of Insurance for their continued work in this area,” said Mitchell.

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Since April, drugmaker Allergan, best known for its wrinkle-fighting drugs Botox and Juvederm, has been posting on its website the payments it made to physicians for promotional speaking and consulting and the value of meals it provided to them.

But the Irvine, Calif., company recently removed all except the most recent payments from its website, erasing the record of those it had paid to help market its products from the third quarter of 2010 to the second quarter of last year.

Allergan’s website now includes only those payments it made to doctors in the third quarter of 2011 — and then only ranges, not specific dollar amounts.

Allergan’s removal of the data won’t prevent the public from viewing it. ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs database of industry payments to doctors includes the figures Allergan had reported for the last half of 2010. Later this month, the company will post data for the full year 2011, and that will be added to the ProPublica database as well.

Allergan is among 12 pharmaceutical companies that post such payments to the web, either voluntarily or as a result of legal settlements with the U.S. government over allegations of improper marketing and illegal kickbacks to doctors. (Allergan pleaded guilty in September 2010 to a misdemeanor charge of promoting Botox for uses not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It paid $600 million to resolve related criminal and civil lawsuits.)

Allergan is the only company to pull earlier payments from its site. The other 11 companies simply add new data while maintaining an archive of previous releases.

Allergan spokeswoman Heather Katt said in an email that Allergan remains in compliance with the terms of its corporate integrity agreement with the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As part of that legal agreement, Katt said, Allergan was required to expand its disclosures in a second phase starting in November. In addition to speaking, consulting and meals, it now posts payments for research, royalties, travel and educational materials. Allergan decided to take down the earlier disclosures to avoid confusion, she said.

“The earlier reports were accurate, but represented limited data and as such would not provide meaningful or accurate comparisons,” Katt said. Donald White, a spokesman for the health department’s inspector general, agreed that Allergan was in compliance with its corporate integrity agreement despite the removal of payment data.

Allergan’s Katt said removing the older information was “in the spirit of providing the general public with the most current and comprehensive information.”

Every pharmaceutical company will have to publicly report all payments to physicians nationwide beginning next year under a provision of the health-care overhaul known as the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.

by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, ProPublica, Feb. 1, 2012, 11:03 a.m.

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