The Times-Tribune

April 21, 2026 

A request to relax certain financial conditions imposed on several Geisinger-operated insurance providers is prompting calls from a coalition focused on health care affordability to freeze or lower insurance costs and relieve pressure on patients and residents.

It comes after the nonprofit Risant Health completed in 2024 its acquisition of Danville-based Geisinger Health, closing a transaction the local health system and the California-based health care giant Kaiser Permanente announced in April 2023. The acquisition made Geisinger the first to join Risant, a nonprofit created by Kaiser Foundation Hospitals.

Shortly before officials announced the completed acquisition, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Michael Humphreys issued an order in late March 2024 approving an application by Risant and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals to acquire control of the Geisinger-operated insurers Geisinger Health Plan, Geisinger Quality Options Inc. and Geisinger Indemnity Insurance Co. Among other financial terms, the order set “Risk-Based Capital” conditions requiring the insurers to maintain certain levels of capital reserves for solvency protection — levels Risant and the insurers now want lowered.

With that request pending before the Pennsylvania Insurance Department, members of the grassroots group Action Together NEPA and the SEIU Healthcare PA union are calling for a public hearing on the matter so individuals can testify to the financial burden posed by high insurance costs. They also want the department to “ensure that parent corporation Kaiser Permanente uses its $82 billion in net worth to freeze health insurance costs for working people struggling to afford care,” the coalition noted in a press release.

“Our request to the Pennsylvania Insurance Department is clear: we need transparency, clarity and accountability from Geisinger-Risant and Kaiser, and we need a freeze on healthcare costs for the hardworking residents of Northeast Pennsylvania,” Action Together NEPA Executive Director Alisha Hoffman-Mirilovich said in the release. “In the past decade, we’ve seen insurance and healthcare corporations become much bigger and more powerful, gaining a greater and greater ability to drive up prices. Working people are suffering right now, and the Insurance Department should step up to make sure that these huge corporations are using their vast resources to hold down costs, not continue raising them.”

Read the full article