Calling for industry-wide reform to solve the nation’s health care crisis, Maine’s insurance commissioner said the rising cost of insurance premiums is “slowly killing off the American middle class.”

Mila Kofman

Mila Kofman, head of Maine’s Bureau of Insurance, was one of four state insurance regulators to participate in a White House media conference call Sept. 22 to highlight the importance of ongoing health care reform efforts in Washington, D.C., according to the Bangor (Maine) Daily News.

Kofman was joined on the call by Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario, Michigan Insurance Commissioner Ken Ross and Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, who is also the past-president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

The focus of the call was a new report by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicating that the average family health insurance premium for an employer-sponsored policy rose 5.5% over the last year. The report advocates for several measures, including prohibiting insurers from refusing to cover those with pre-existing conditions and eliminating lifetime caps on coverage.

Kofman said, “The health care crisis cannot be solved by states alone,” according to the report, and called for industry-wider regulation to prohibit insurer from dropping coverage when a policyholder becomes ill. She also voiced her support for an individual mandate for health insurance and subsidies to help those in need secure coverage, the Daily News reported.

“The health care crisis is slowly killing off the American middle class,” Kofman said. “Being one illness away from bankruptcy is unacceptable for individuals and families.”

The conference call came on the same day that Vice President Joe Biden addressed the NAIC at its national conference in National Harbor, Md., also stressing common “ground rules’ in the industry, including the elimination of lifetime caps and dropping coverage for sick policyholders.