New Hampshire Court Strikes Down LTCi Rate Hike Caps
A recent New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling tossed out certain caps on long-term care insurance premium rates set by the state insurance commissioner.
The Feb. 17 ruling, on an appeal brought by Genworth Financial, concluded that setting the LTCi caps exceeds the insurance commissioner's rulemaking authority. The fallout could be felt throughout an industry struggling to accommodate insurers' requests for repeated rate hikes to stabilize LTCi blocks.
"This decision will hopefully serve as an opportunity for the department to reconsider the premium rate caps altogether," the law firm Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath said in a blog post. "Other states have refrained from implementing premium caps in favor of phased-in increases for larger rate increases, which arguably better informs policyholders while attempting to balance premium adequacy and policyholder protections."