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Bill would require annual primary-care spending reports from health carriers to align state measurements
Summary
House Bill 1379 would give the Office of the Insurance Commissioner authority to require annual reporting of primary care expenditures from health carriers, aligning OIC reporting with the Health Care Authority’s definition and supporting the state’s primary-care spending target.
The House Health Care & Wellness Committee received testimony on House Bill 1379, a technical bill that would allow the Office of the Insurance Commissioner to require health carriers to annually report primary-care expenditure data using definitions developed by the Health Care Cost Transparency Board and the Health Care Authority.
Representative Debra Lekanoff, prime sponsor and vice chair, described the bill as a technical cleanup to ensure consistent measurement across state agencies and to help the state track primary-care utilization and spending over time. “Consistent reporting across all commercial health carriers will allow the state to better monitor changes in expenditures over time and across markets,” Lekanoff said.
Nico Janssen of the Office of the Insurance Commissioner testified the change addresses a technical challenge: current authority is tied to insurer rate-and-form filings, which do not cover all insurance markets OIC oversees. The bill would allow OIC to require annual reports of primary-care spending and make the information public to support the state’s goal of devoting 12% of health-care spending to primary care (a target established in prior legislation).
OIC and HCA witnesses said consistent data will help track progress toward the 12% primary-care spending benchmark and enable analysis of utilization patterns across markets. No opposition was recorded in the hearing; testimony framed the measure as a statutory alignment and reporting improvement. The committee closed public testimony on the bill with no recorded vote in the transcript.
