Author

Health Committee

Publish date

Description

There have been increasing calls from the public for more freedom to switch Integrated Shield Plan and associated riders. Advocates posit that existing rules are unfair to policyholders who deserve flexibility to seek better coverage or lower prices for themselves. This paper highlights that portability rules that require a risk pool to accept a policyholder that may be expected to claim more from the pool than what is implied in the premium rate, could increase premium rates for incumbents of the risk pool. Fairness of such premium increase from the perspective of the incumbents – over 80% of them being the “silent majority” who have not made a claim in the past year – should be adequately considered.

This paper does not advocate for a specific set of portability rules. Instead, the paper presented several perspectives of what is deemed fair along the continuum of possible beliefs amongst the insured public who wanted more flexibility – as well as potential unintended consequences that may result if the impact of changes are not properly understood.