Reject Pennsylvania Insurance Merger

Health-insurance premiums have increased by more than 87 percent in the last five years, outpacing the growth of other health-care costs. It seems the only entities that profit from the country's health-care crisis are large insurance companies.

President-elect Barack Obama has cited a lack of health-insurance competition and attributed it to a failure of antitrust enforcement. He has criticized the Justice Department for taking a lax attitude toward health-insurance mergers, noting that "there have been over 400 health-care mergers in the last 10 years, and . . . 95 percent of insurance markets in the United States are now highly concentrated."

This concentration has led to higher prices, more anti-consumer insurance provisions, longer payment delays, less coverage, and poor service.

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This article was originally published in The Philadelphia Inquirer.