Does this make sense?

I've been spending the last few days trying to find out quite a few things regarding how Medical Insurance prices are figured out.  In my many emails to different State offices, I have yet to find the answer to one question.

Does the State of Wisconsin keep track of how much medical costs are by County, City or Region?  For some reason, no one can give me a straight answer.  The Office for the Commissioner of Insurance just keeps saying that they don't 'approve' the premium rates.  Insurance companies have to submit their premium rates/hikes to this office.  But, from what I've been able to find out, the actuarial department of every insurance company does their own study/research on how much healthcare costs are and then use that to justify their premium increases.

So, here's the question for all of you.  Does anyone know if there is any State entity here or for that matter in any other state that actually keeps track of Healthcare costs?  If there is not, this means that any insurance company can come up with figures, submit them along with their rate proposals for the year and get away with raising prices yearly.  In our case, Humana is saying that Healthcare Costs in our area of the state have gone up 25.7% the past year. 

How can we trust the insurance company to be honest in this process?  Recently, Anthem Insurance in California backpedaled on their rates due to being caught with inflating the figures on the cost of Medical Care.  It would be interesting to see if that is happening everywhere.  No wonder we are seeing the rate increases that we are.  Something is very wrong here. Will keep checking and if I get any answers, I will pass them on.

Have a great week!