Around the PIA Western Alliance States – Week of September 2, 2025

Oregon — Earthquake Guides for Insurance Agents: NEW! The Oregon Earthquake Guide for Insurance Agents provides locality-specific information and tools that agents can use to help insurance shoppers and clients understand their earthquake hazard and make informed decisions about earthquake insurance.

CREW produced the Oregon Earthquake Guide for Insurance Agents as the first of two pilot guides. CREW’s goal is to prepare comparable guides for each of the earthquake-prone states of the western U.S.

View & Download the Oregon Guide

Funding for this project was provided by an FY24 grant from FEMA National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program.

CREW just released the Oregon Earthquake Guide for Insurance Agents! We wrapped up a final review with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) yesterday, so the guide is hot off the press today.

This is the first of two pilot guides (the second, for Nevada, is in review): CREW’s goal is to use the pilot-guide template to create similar guides for states across the western US that have a high- to very-high earthquake hazard.

The project was prompted by the results of CREW’s survey of insurance agents a couple of years ago: most survey respondents indicated that they’re willing to educate consumers about the earthquake hazard and earthquake insurance, but they need locality-specific information about the hazard, presented in a way that is suited to helping individuals make insurance decisions for a particular property. The template of the new guides was designed to help meet that need.

To access the Oregon guide, look here: Earthquake Guides for Insurance Agents

ancial Regulation recently announced the following proposed rulemaking:

Filing Caption: Amending OAR 836-150-0040 to add ORP payment parameters for plan year 2026

Rule Proposed: 836-150-0040

Rule Summary: The amended rule will include payment parameters for plan year 2026 (attachment point of $108,000; reinsurance cap of $1,000,000; and coinsurance rate of 50%), while deleting the provisions related to plan year 2021. 

Filed: Aug 19, 2025

Hearing Date/Time: Oct 22, 2025, 9:30 AM, Pacific Time

This is a hybrid meeting conducted in-person and virtually via Microsoft Teams. See Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Teams meeting instructions.

Last day/time to offer comment: Oct 29, 2025, 5:00 PM 

For more information on recently proposed rulemaking, please visit the division's website:

https://dfr.oregon.gov/laws-rules/Documents/Proposed/20251022-orp-payment-parameters.pdf

Washington — Prep for open enrollment with our free Medicare Jumpstart Toolkit: Get a free Medicare Jumpstart Toolkit to help you get ready to take action during Open Enrollment

Medicare Open Enrollment is just around the corner. Get ready for a flurry of commercials and mail — all promoting the “best plan for you!” If you’re already feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone. Our Statewide Health Insurance Benefits Advisors gears up every year at this time to help people consider their options and sort through their choices.

Some people are eager to get started and others are too overwhelmed to take the first step. Our SHIBA team takes a lot of pride in the work they do but Open Enrollment only runs for a short time (Oct. 15 to Dec. 7). We know we can’t help everyone, so we’re trying something new this year!

We’ve created new tools to help you get started and take action if you want or need to make a change. It’s called the Medicare Jumpstart Toolkit: Seven easy steps you can take to get ready for Open Enrollment.

First, we started with what we’ve learned from helping people every year:

    Many are unsure of the type of plan they currently have.

    They can’t find the important piece of mail they were sent that details what’s changing for next year.

    They’re unsure of what’s changing or what’s really important to them about their current coverage, like premiums, providers, or prescription choices.

    They have not created an online Medicare account.

    They don’t know how to use Medicare’s Plan Finder tool or why they should.

We spend a lot of time helping people with these “get ready” steps before we can help them make the critical step of picking a new plan.

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The Medicare Jumpstart Toolkit is designed to help you walk through the first steps you need to take before you can compare plans and get enrolled. It includes:

    A big envelope to save all your important mail — so you have the details of how your plan is changing.

    A menu of the different types of health plan cards — similar to a diner menu — so you can see the different cards and match yours! Your options will depend on the type of plan you have.