CHAMPAIGN – After four straight years of double-digit increases in the cost of providing health coverage for its small employee group, Champaign County Health Care Consumers is turning to the state for help.

The Champaign-based nonprofit organization filed a complaint Wednesday with the Illinois Department of Insurance against its longtime insurer, PersonalCare Health Management Inc., a subsidiary of Bethesda, Md.-based Coventry Health Care.

The complaint says PersonalCare has charged Health Care Consumers double-digit premium increases for each of the past four years, with the increases averaging just over 24 percent a year.

Health Care Consumers Executive Director Claudia Lennhoff said the cost of individual coverage for Health Care Consumers' insured staff of five people ran $13,533 in fiscal 2008, and for the same five employees the cost ran $29,500 this year, she said.

Why not just drop PersonalCare and find cheaper insurance?

"We've had PersonalCare since the mid-1980s," Lennhoff added. "Believe it or not, they're cheaper than Health Alliance. This is the problem with these small group plans. You have very few options."

Lennhoff said she knows the Department of Insurance can't offer Health Care Consumers rate relief right now, because it lacks regulatory authority over insurance premium rates.

But she believes the information about PersonalCare's rates is important for the state to have at a time when the state is looking at health insurance rates and planning for changes coming up under federal health care reform legislation.

In 2014, the Affordable Care Act would empower states to exclude health plans with a history of excessive or unjustified premium increases from new state-run health insurance exchanges to be established with the intention of opening up more affordable coverage options to families, individuals and businesses.

Lennhoff said her organization also filed the complaint to lend support to legislation introduced last month (HB 1501) that would give the Department of Insurance regulatory authority over premium rate increases starting in 2012, she said.

This past December, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued proposed regulations that would require insurers to disclose and justify proposed rate increases of 10 percent or more starting this July 1, along with thorough state reviews to determine if the rate increase is unreasonable.

However, Illinois is currently among the states lacking authority over insurance rate increases.

"We need the authority to review and deny increases," said Illinois Department of Insurance Director Michael McRaith. "At this point, we don't have that authority."

The bill currently pending before the state House is based on "complaints, inquiries and disgust" from families and employers trying to access health care, he said.

"The absence of rate approval authority has released unbridled rate increases in Illinois, and that dates back many years," McRaith added.

Average premiums for family coverage have risen 131 percent since 1999, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Under the Affordable Care Act, 45 states (including Illinois and the District of Columbia) received $1 million grants to start improving their oversight of proposed insurance rate increases. McRaith said Illinois is using the grant to support the collection and publication of rate information.

In addition to calling on the state to enact rate regulation legislation, Health Care Consumers' complaint also asks for legislation to prohibit gender and age rating in health insurance premiums and to require insurers to treat small group plans as part of a larger single-risk pool.

Currently, those gender and age rate differences are allowed under Illinois law and make it more expensive to provide health benefits to women and older people.

On average over the last four years, Health Care Consumers is charged $3,000 more to insure a woman than a man, and four out of five of its staff members are female, the complaint states. Age rating pushed what would have been a 13.5 renewal rate increase this year to an overall 24.2 percent increase because three staff members "aged out" of their categories, the organization said.

Got a beef with your own health insurer over drastic premium increases? Health Care Consumers says it stands ready to help other businesses, organizations and individuals file complaints with the Department of Insurance.

Coventry Health Care's Illinois office didn't respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.