CA insurance commissioner chides Blue Shield over rates

For the second time in two days, a state regulator criticized Blue Shield of California for an "unreasonable" rate hike affecting tens of thousands of individual policyholders. California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said Thursday that the nonprofit health insurer's latest rate hike of as much as 20% for about 268,000 individual policyholders was excessive. But he and other state officials don't have the authority to reject changes in premiums. Jones said he asked Blue Shield to impose a smaller increase that would have saved policyholders an estimated $16.5 million. The company declined to do so, he said.