Homeowners Insurance Boston Massachusetts

North Andover-area hospitals resist merger-mania

Picture the state's suburban and rural hospitals as nervous dates, seeking a stable partner in an uncertain health care world.

After a wave of consolidations and new alliances last year, industry leaders say 2012 will likely bring another round of community hospitals pairing up with what they hope will be their perfect match.

"People aren't exactly speed dating, but I do think that some community hospitals feel somewhat of an urgency to identify the right partners for them to move forward in the new environment," said Lynn Nicholas, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Hospital Association.

Hospitals and other health care providers are under mounting pressure from state and federal regulators and insurance providers to cut costs while improving the ways they coordinate patient care.

The changes come on top of existing struggles at many community hospitals, such as Medicare and Medicaid payments that fall short of the actual cost of treating elderly and poor patients, and competing with large academic medical centers in Boston.

Several freestanding, nonprofit hospitals said they plan to remain independent this year, Newburyport’s Anna Jaques Hospital among them.

Last year several others scrambled to partner with academic centers to provide more specialized services locally, strengthen existing partnerships, pool resources with other community hospitals or join larger networks in hopes of staying competitive.

Consolidation could lead to better-coordinated care, and mergers have led to new investments in hospitals that need upgrades, said Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, executive director of patient advocacy group Health Care for All.

But the group wants the state to ensure expanding institutions don't end up hiking costs for patients or making it harder to access care in a larger system.

"There is an oversight responsibility that we think will be important as the marketplace is changing so dramatically," Slemmer said.

LegalNewsline | Coakley calls home insurance rate request illegally ...

BOSTON (Legal Newsline) - Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley's office told the Commissioner of Insurance that a proposed home insurance rate request for more than 150,000 consumers is illegally excessive.

The rate hikes, proposed by the Massachusetts Property Insurance Underwriters Association, or FAIR Plan, includes approximately 60,000 families on Cape Cod and other coastal areas where insurance companies are reducing business. The FAIR Plan consists of the state's insurance companies and was created to provide coverage to consumers who cannot obtain it in the open marketplace at reasonable rates. Massachusetts law requires that rates through the FAIR Plan cannot be excessive.

"The FAIR Plan is a crucial service for homeowners who are unable to find insurance coverage, and it is our job to make sure its rates are not excessive," Coakley said Thursday. "We will continue to fight on behalf of homeowners to protect their right to affordable coverage."

The industry is requesting that the commissioner raise rates for the FAIR Plan by an average of 7.4 percent across the state, by 6.7 percent on Cape Cod and by 10 percent in Lynn, Brockton, Lawrence, Quincy, Fall River, New Bedford and parts of Boston. The increases would include a profit-provision add-on that equates to $15 million of added annual profit. Minus the add-on, the increases average two percent statewide. Between the fiscal years of 2007 and 2011, the profit of the FAIR Plan totaled more than $200 million.

Coakley's office urged the commissioner to block any additional rate increase during the testimony and said that the proposal is allegedly "unsupported, and would contravene the statutory intent" of making insurance available at reasonable rates to homeowners. Coakley's office also alleged that the proposed rate hike is mainly based on undisclosed hurricane models that insurers claim predict the damage and likelihood of a major hurricane hitting the state.

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