wa-law.org > bill > 2025-26 > SB 5243 > Original Bill
The legislature finds that:
During the COVID-19 pandemic spanning multiple years many persons, companies, and governments lost huge sums of income and reserves through job loss, loss of employees, added expenses, and interruptions in their ability to conduct their trade for extended periods. In contrast, many health insurance companies reported enormous profits during this time and used those profits to take advantage of stock buybacks and increase CEO and executive pay, and rather than passing on those profits to their policyholders in the form of reduced premiums and increased benefits they instead continued to lobby elected officials and governments for increases in insurance premium rates.
The voters of the state of Washington require immediate action to be assured that funds collected by their health insurance companies will be used for the health care needs of policyholders.
The definitions in this section apply throughout this chapter unless the context clearly requires otherwise:
"Health insurance company" has the same meaning as "health carrier" as defined in RCW 48.43.005.
"Policyholder" means a person or group of persons who have entered into a contractual arrangement or on whose behalf a contractual arrangement has been entered into with a health insurance company to receive health care services.
Health insurance companies operating within the state of Washington and offering health insurance policies for the benefit of policyholders may not use premiums collected from those policyholders for lobbying or to make contributions to candidates for state and federal elected offices.
Health insurance companies operating within the state of Washington and offering health insurance policies for the benefit of policyholders may not make contributions to political committees using funds collected as premiums from policyholders. Health insurance companies may make contributions from those policyholders' funds that have been voluntarily and with express permission received as a contribution to a separate political committee to be used for political lobbying on the behalf of and for the benefit of those policyholders.
The commission shall enforce the provisions of this chapter. In the course of this duty, the commission may request documentation from the office of the insurance commissioner and may use any evidence provided by a policyholder.
Any health insurance company found to have violated the provisions of this chapter is liable to their policyholders for at least two times the amount of any unlawful contribution to any candidate or political committee.
If there is found to be any lobbying in violation of this chapter, the health insurance company shall be fined no less than $25,000 and no more than $500,000 for each violation, to be adjusted annually by the commission based on the consumer price index as published by the United States bureau of labor statistics or their successor.
The provisions of this chapter are to be liberally construed to effectuate its broad intent, policies, and purposes.
If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remainder of the act or the application of the provision to other persons or circumstances is not affected.
This act may be known and cited as the health care dollars for health care act.