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Health Access
414 13th Street, Suite 450
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: (510) 873-8787
Fax: (510) 873-8789

Reform the Individual Insurance Market

Home Providing Consumer Protection Reform the Individual Insurance Market

Links to Related Bills
AB1111 (Frommer), which as amended would help to provide consumer choice in the individual market.
AB1199 (Frommer), which as amended would require HMOs to give consumers a copy of their medical information record used in determining whether to cover an individual in the individual market.
AB356 (Chan), which as amended would require disclosure of the criteria and process for denying individuals health insurance coverage.


The market for individual insurance is a small but critical market for the self-employed and higher income professionals who can afford to purchase coverage on their own but who cannot find their way through the thorny thicket of products and medical underwriting designed to protect the solvency of HMOs, not individuals seeking coverage.

The market for individual health insurance is the Wild Wild West of health care. What minimal regulation exists is designed to protect the financial solvency of the HMO as much as the availability and affordability of coverage.

Medical underwriting in this market can allow HMOs to refuse to insure anyone for any reason that assures the financial viability of the HMO. Consumers have no idea why they are turned down for individual insurance. They fill out pages and pages of questions and can be denied coverage because they got care - or because they did not.

Health Access, California’s consumer coalition for quality, affordable health care for all Californians, is pleased to sponsor and support bills to give relief to those consumers in the individual insurance market, or those who have been denied for “pre-existing conditions.”

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