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Insurance Commissioner Fines Regence

Regence says it worked cooperatively with the commissioner to resolve the dispute.
November 20, 2015

Two Regence health plans in Washington have been fined by Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler for failing to provide information about the impact of new Hepatitis C drug therapy costs.

Asuris Northwest Health in Poulsbo, and Regence BlueShield in Spokane each received fines of $10,000, with another $5,000 fine suspended after they agreed to not violate the same regulations again.

When asked for a response, Jared Ishkanian, spokesman for Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon, told The Lund Report that these fines did not involve member care but dealt with data sharing requests from the Insurance Division.

“We are committed to working cooperatively with the OIC to comply with their request for financial information about Hepatitis C therapy costs. We responded to the OIC’s request sincerely, accurately and in good faith with the information we had available at the time. OIC viewed our submission as incomplete, and issued a fine of $10,000 each to Regence and Asuris, which has since been reduced to $5,000 each,” he wrote in an email response.

Diane can be reached at [email protected].

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