Pa. regulators probe health insurers' practices

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says he wants to know more about what’s behind a pattern of rate increases by health insurance companies and suggests the companies are padding revenues before federal health reforms are fully implemented.

Rendell said today the Insurance Department was investigating the state’s nine largest health insurers over the use of what he calls “questionable health profiling tools.”

Rendell says some small businesses are being hit with 50 percent increases.

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Insurance Federation, an industry group, says the use of so-called medical underwriting techniques to set rates in the marketplace for smaller customers isn’t new.