Guam - In light of the protests filed by three of the island's four health insurance companies, Committee on Insurance chairman Senator Ben Pangelinan along with Vice Speaker B.J. Cruz held an informal meeting this week with all four insurance carriers - Calvo's Selectcare, Moylan's Netcare, Staywell and Takecare Insurance - to hear their concerns on the health insurance negotiating process.

Selectcare's Frank Campillo say the meeting was informative, saying, "The current process has some pitfalls but those pitfalls were created by a significant number of legislative actions that have been passed in the past couple of years. Evidently the process had become very difficult, very convoluted, and of course it brings us to the situation where we are today."

And Netcare's Jerry Crisostomo added, "Because the process is so cumbersome and very tedious, that it makes sense for lawmakers to revisit that process to try and simplify it so you don't have situations like this where you have a protest after protest and it just delays the coverage issues for the employees."

Some suggestions included revisiting a study done by Lewis & Ellis that evaluated the entire health insurance process, as well as hiring a consultant or expert to help with the negotiations.

Takecare Insurance meanwhile declined to comment on the meeting. The vice speaker tells KUAM News, he and Pangelinan are thinking of introducing legislation once this year's negotiations are completed to address the concerns.