Health insurance rates for some people are actually slated to go down... they're folks who can take advantage of the state's federally funded high risk insurance pool.
After the federal health reform bill passed in the spring, 23 states, including North Carolina, chose to create federally funded high risk pools for their residents. North Carolina's plan is called Inclusive Health, and it's run alongside an already-existing state funded high risk pool.
Now Inclusive Health head Michael Keough says he's gotten the green light to drop rates by about 30 percent for people in the federally funded plan. He says the prices are pretty competitive:
"Just the fact that in North Carolina it's cheaper to get health care than in say, New York or California, or some of the states where frankly the rates for hospital and physician services are much higher. That drives our costs more than anything else."
Keough says the biggest savings will come for folks who've lacked insurance for six months and are between the ages of 50 and 64.