Insurance Horror Stories Abound Since Getting Elected In 1992, Senn Has Incensed The Industry With Her Confrontational Style.

Tom and Jane Hainline asked what they should do. The cost of the retired couple’s health insurance continues to soar as the quality of their care slides.

“I guess we’re asking for help,” Jane Hainline said, noting they’re struggling to pay their $428-a-month insurance bill.

“What are we supposed to do?”

Deborah Senn, the state insurance commissioner, jotted notes to herself about the Hainline’s bind and other tales from exasperated Spokane residents at a town meeting Wednesday night.

Senn came to discuss the mounting difficulty for people to find affordable health insurance. A crisis has already hit for about 400,000 people in Washington who pay for their own coverage, such as the self-employed.

Many insurance companies are either trying to hike premiums by as much as 34 percent or they are dropping the policies entirely.

Spokane insurance agent Chuck McFarland told Senn the state’s requirement that companies insure people regardless of their pre-existing health conditions forced some insurance companies out of the state.

Ten years ago, McFarland said he had 23 different insurance carriers to offer someone looking for independent coverage. Now he has two.

“If these greedy insurance companies can come into Washington state and make money hand over fist why did 21 leave?” he asked.

Senn fired back that the companies that left were “cherry pickers”- companies that only wanted to insure healthy people.

McFarland and others also claimed state regulations attract AIDS patients and other expensive ill people who can’t get insurance elsewhere.

“That’s not true,” Senn replied. “That’s an urban legend.”

Senn is accustomed to battling insurance companies.

Since getting elected in 1992, Senn has incensed the industry with her confrontational style.

The clash has never been more striking.

Senn’s office faces 14 lawsuits from companies trying to overrule her rejections of their hefty rate-increase requests.

And the state Legislature is considering a dozen bills designed to curb her power, Senn said earlier Wednesday in an interview with The Spokesman-Review editorial board.

About 30 people attended the evening forum at East Central Community Center.

One Spokane man complained that 33 percent of his income is consumed by health insurance premiums. Another said his insurance costs continue to skyrocket despite the fact he’s never sick.

Earlene Ferguson told Senn her Blue Cross policy went from $177 to $211 a month recently. “Then I was told it would go up another 40 percent.”

She said she shopped around, but couldn’t find a better deal.

Senn has helped craft legislation that would force insurance companies to either cover individual policies or pay into a pool subsidizing companies that will.

The bill also requires companies to keep their individual rates comparable to their group rates.

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