Vermont’s insurance regulator has intervened to set significant guardrails on the contracts that hospitals and insurers are negotiating for the coming year in an effort to reduce health insurance costs for individuals, families and businesses in the state.

On Aug. 14, the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation — the state agency tasked with ensuring the solvency of insurance companies of all types — issued an order that escalated its involvement in what have largely been private negotiations between hospitals and commercial insurers over payment rates. Those negotiated prices — along with how much and what kind of health care hospitals provide to insured Vermonters — are a major factor determining the cost of monthly health insurance premiums for the year.

The department’s order re

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