For the past three years, my business partner and I have had PacifiCare health insurance as our primary health insurance provider. When we started our coverage, our monthly premium was just over $500 per month. At our yearly renewal, our premium jumped up to right about $600 – more than a 10% increase, but it was still manageable so we kept the coverage for another year. At the yearly renewal on our third year, the monthly rate jumped to $800. More than a 30% increase! For the same coverage we had before! At the time, we hadn’t shopped around for any other options (because we are idiots) and our company was doing very well, so we kept the insurance plan for one more year. Then finally, last March, when our plan came up for renewal again, the price was going to jump up to $1,042. Another 30% increase! Now I don’t know too much about insurance, or the way its priced, but I think PacifiCare was price gouging.

Seeing a 20% increase the first year, then a 30% increase in years two and three is just absurd to me. When we started shopping around to find similar plans, we found plenty out there that offered the same, if not better coverage for less than half of what PacifiCare wanted to charge us for the same coverage. Why would PacifiCare want to increase their premiums so much? And why would they want to price small businesses out of the market? Let’s face it, most small business owners are always looking for way to save money, so when the cost of health insurance doubles in 3 years time they will obviously begin to shop for other options. One suggestion I’ve heard is that PacifiCare was trying to adjust their portfolio to large companies, and so they just kept increasing premiums (astronomically) on small businesses and groups of under 50 employees. If the small business would pay the inflated premium, then PacifiCare would keep them, but if they weren’t willing to pay twice what the market rate was at, PacifiCare wouldn’t budge and would let them find insurance elsewhere.

If you ask me, that is a terrible way to run a business and I’ll never be going back to PacifiCare. I started an online search with Health Quote Insider and found a great deal… less than half of what we were paying with Pacificare, and almost 1/3 of what we would have been paying if we would have stuck with them after the rate increase. Another site that offered good deals was 2 Insure 4 Less, but you have to fill out a couple of pages worth of information there… the Health Quote Insider site is much quicker and easier when you are just looking for a healthcare quote.