20% Rate Increases on health insurance

We are getting new rates for our individual health insurance plans effective for 10/1/2010, and we are seeing on average 20% rate increases on almost all plans and all companies. 

Why are they going up?  Effective 9/23/2010 the first requirements of the Healthcare Reform bill are hitting insurance plans which include:

1. $0 out-of-pocket and unlimited preventative care (used to have to pay at least a copay)
2. Unlimited lifetime maximum benefits (these used to be $2-5M)
3. Dependents under 26 years old covered whether full-time students or not (used to have to be a full-time student to be covered over 19)
4. One of the primary reasons for the increase is the first stage of guaranteed issue health insurance-under 19 years old is guaranteed issue with NO preexisting clause (used to be underwritten based on health on individual plans, and 1 yr preexisting clause if they didn't have at least 1 year of prior insurance)

So you can't obviously give away coverage for free, so yes there are more coverages, but in turn we are also seeing this first stage of rate increases across the board.  As other requirements begin to hit plans in 2014 (guaranteed issue for all ages, maternity included on individual plans, etc),  I'm afraid that we will continue to see even higher than normal rate increases.  Some changes needed to be made probably, and will help some people, but overall giving away coverage is going to cost someone-and that includes us unfortunately. 

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