Only one senator voted against RI's new health insurance commissioner. Here's why.

PROVIDENCE - A single protest vote was the only hitch in the otherwise unanimous Senate confirmation vote for the state's new Health Insurance Commissioner Cory King.

The final tally was 34-to-1, with Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman V. Susan Sosnowski casting the lone nay vote after a run of colleagues sang King's praises. Sosnowski is the lead sponsor of a bill – panned by King at a recent hearing – to require "regional parity" in the rates Rhode Island's private insurers pay doctors.

King has been serving as acting commissioner since December 2022. He previously served as the chief of staff in the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner from 2021-22, and director of policy, from 2019 to 2021.

Senators spoke highly of King

Since his appointment as acting health insurance commissioner, Sen. Joshua Miller, the chairman of the Senate Commission on Health & Human Services, said King has "demonstrated his ability" by taking a lead role in a review of Rhode Island's Medicaid reimbursement rates and making the Office of Health Insurance Commissioner "an important health policy and data resource."

Sen. Sam Bell credited King with "regulatory changes that require [Rhode Island's health insurers] to triple their investments in childhood behavioral health. It's one of the most substantive changes we've made in health insurance regulation."

"I'd like him to be a little more critical of the insurance companies [in] a number of areas, but I think he's made a truly remarkable amount of progress," Bell said.

At a gathering this past fall of the National Conference of State Legislatures, Sen. Pam Lauria said, "Rhode Island's Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner and specifically our acting commissioner, Mr. King, was set as a benchmark for the rest of the country to emulate as a way to control the costs associated with health care."

King's opposition to regional parity in rates paid to doctors ruffled feathers

But King ruffled some feathers when he opposed a bill, introduced by Sosnowski, to give the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner an expanded new role in developing, and then phasing, regional parity into the rates Rhode Island's private insurers pay doctors.

The Rhode Island Medical Society − and a parade of doctors − enthusiastically backed the legislation, during a recent Senate hearing.

As the legislation is written, King warned: "The regional rate parity framework will increase the health insurance premiums paid by individuals and small businesses in Rhode Island. It will also increase the cost of health care paid by self-funded employers, including the municipalities and the state employee health benefit plan."

This would create a cycle of insurers, facing higher provider prices, increasing their premiums to employers, who then pass that cost on to their workers, making health care ultimately more expensive for families, he said.

Sosnowski says that, under King, RI patients are being pushed to other states

Following her vote against King's confirmation, Sosnowski, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, issued a statement explaining why she did what she did:

"We have a present health care crisis in Rhode Island – hospitals closing, doctors leaving for neighboring states to achieve higher insurance reimbursements, leaving patients without care or forcing patients to use emergency rooms, overburdening our hospitals and staff," she wrote.

More: 'How did this happen?' Primary care shortage keeps hitting RI hard

"Some patients are going over the state border: Yale New Haven in Connecticut, Mass General or Seacoast in Massachusetts, taking Rhode Island health insurance payments with them to out of state hospitals and doctors," she continued. "So, who wins? The health insurers. They make their money wherever Rhode Islanders have to go for health care."

"South County Hospital in South Kingstown has been hurt particularly hard because the Connecticut hospitals are the same travel distance as Providence hospitals for many in South County," said Sosnowski, who represents South Kingstown.

"All this has been going on for 5 years under the watch of Cory King, the acting Health InsuranceCommissioner," she said. "While the cost of commercial health insurance premiums in the state rose from 23% to 28% of median household income."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI's new health insurance commissioner confirmed in near-unanimous vote