Legislation changes or rulings by The Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner will sometimes mean higher premium costs for Washington residents. Usually because of a new mandate increasing the coverage your health insurance provides. Whether you want the new coverage or not, the mandates increase the risk to the insurance carrier, thus increasing your costs.
This go around, the increase is not much (not like the 3% increase a couple years ago). For many clients of the Washington Health Insurance Agency, they’ll see only a slight $1 or $2 increase. Some will not see any increase at all.
The increase is due to a couple of changes to the Organ transplant coverage:
•Organ Transplant Lifetime Maximum—SB 5725 requires health plans to limit transplants to a separate lifetime maximum of not less than $350,000. (up from $250,000)
•Organ Transplant Waiting Periods—HB 1308 requires health plans to reduce organ transplant waiting periods by the amount of time a person had prior creditable coverage.
Washington Health Insurance Agency Blog 