Maryland health care rates come with twist; State leaders celebrate lower premiums, but deductibles will be increasing

For weeks, Maryland leaders have been touting a bipartisan deal that will allow the state's residents to pay lower premiums to buy health insurance - the first such rate reductions in years.

The deal, made by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, Maryland House of Delegates Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller, created a reinsurance program that uses taxpayer dollars to help insurers cover the costs of expensive health care claims - and led to a recently announced reduction of premiums of up to 17 percent.

But what state officials didn't highlight in their announcements is that although premiums are going down, deductibles are going up.

According to a new report for the Maryland Health Insurance Coverage Protection Commission, the average medical deductible per plan will rise nearly $300 - to $4,365 from $4,072 from last year.

Montgomery County State Del. Kirill Reznik, a Democrat who is a Maryland Health Insurance Coverage Protection commissioner, said he was displeased to learn of the rise in deductibles.

"I was deeply disappointed that in the fanfare to publicize decreased rates for this year, the Maryland Insurance Commission and the Maryland Healthcare Exchange chose to gloss over the potential increase in deductibles," Reznik said.

Deductibles have been rising for years in health care plans across the country, but the Maryland Insurance Administration does not regulate deductibles, only premiums.

Reznik is an advocate of converting the state to a single-payer health care program - nicknamed "Medicare-for-all" - a position favored by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ben Jealous.

"This report is yet another indication that temporary half-solutions won't fix our broken health care system," Jealous said in a statement.

The Hogan administration did not respond to a request for comment on rising deductibles.

In a recent interview, Hogan said he was focused on bipartisan solutions to help bring down health care costs - such as the reinsurance program - but that major change would need to come at the federal level. The governor has argued a single-payer health care system implemented at the state level would be unaffordable and could disrupt Maryland's economy.

"This problem is something we've been focused on for four years, but it's primarily something that must be dealt with at the federal level," Hogan said of health care costs. "Washington has failed miserably in coming up with solutions to this health care crisis. Because of their failure to act, we took some fairly significant steps. The state cannot solve all of the health care problems by ourselves, but I think we've done more than almost any state in America." luke.broadwater@baltsun.com

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Credit: By Luke Broadwater - The Baltimore Sun - luke.broadwater@baltsun.com;twitter.com/lukebroadwater