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Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Now Has Rating Areas

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Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Colorado used to be the only company with one rate grid for the entire state of Colorado.  That’s not the case anymore now that they’ve released their rates for 2007.  Anthem’s number crunchers have come up with four sets of rates for Colorado, based on the cost of services,… Read more about Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Now Has Rating Areas

Sending Healthcare Overseas

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It probably won’t suprise anyone to learn that US businesses are looking into the possibility of sending employees overseas for medical treatments that tend to be costly at home. Afterall, US businesses have been outsourcing production and customer service overseas for years. So far, only a handful of employees have been sent overseas by their… Read more about Sending Healthcare Overseas

A Greener Earth, Fitter Employees and Lower Insurance Premiums

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What if health insurance carriers teamed up with employers to improve employee health, lower the number of cars on the roads, and give employees a discount on their health insurance?  What would it take to get people to participate?  Here’s the idea:  Let’s say a company has 200 employees, and offers health insurance to them,… Read more about A Greener Earth, Fitter Employees and Lower Insurance Premiums

Insurance Mergers and Network Shrinkage Hurts Consumers

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I have a good friend who is seven months pregnant with her first child. Her employer-sponsored health insurance is with PacifiCare, which recently merged with United HealthCare. Ever since her first prenatal visit in April, she has been seeing a nurse-midwife and an OB/GYN with whom she feels very comfortable. She had planned to deliver… Read more about Insurance Mergers and Network Shrinkage Hurts Consumers

Uninsured American Children

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There are currently 9 million uninsured children in the US.  Census data shows that 70% of those children live in a home where at least one parent works full-time.   The same data indicates that about two thirds of these children would qualify for government-sponsored health insurance if the parents were to apply for it.  Uninsured people are… Read more about Uninsured American Children

Financial Incentives For Good Health

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I have a friend who is a physician’s assistant, and spent some time working for a city wellness program.  The plan was set up to help city employees improve their overall health, and in the process, get a discount on the health insurance premiums that were deducted from their paychecks.  I think this could be… Read more about Financial Incentives For Good Health

Wal-Mart Health Insurance Not That Bad

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Let me preface this post by saying that I am usually not too impressed with Wal-Mart. I think that their lowest-price-at-any-cost strategy is not the best long-range plan in terms of caring for our Earth and its inhabitants. The Wal-Mart news of the day is about their new super-low priced generic drug program. The news… Read more about Wal-Mart Health Insurance Not That Bad

Sending the Wrong Message To Our Kids About Health Insurance

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Recently, several states have passed laws increasing the age that children can stay on their parents’ health insurance policy.  The reasoning behind the change is sound: these days, it’s not as easy to get a job with health benefits as it used to be, since fewer employers offer coverage to employees.  So allowing young adults to remain on… Read more about Sending the Wrong Message To Our Kids About Health Insurance

Preventative Care on Individual Health Insurance

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We’ve all heard the adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, yet it often seems that most people ignore this advice.  Otherwise people would not be dying from smoking-related cancers and the plethora of illnesses caused by obesity.  It’s easy to say that these are personal problems and that people… Read more about Preventative Care on Individual Health Insurance

Ultrasounds and pregnancy… too much of a good thing?

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There is no doubt that over the last few generations, vast amounts of research has been done in the area of obstetrics; modern medicine seems to be able to work miracles when it comes to the care and safety of high-risk mothers and babies, both during and after pregnancy. Babies born 3 months early have… Read more about Ultrasounds and pregnancy… too much of a good thing?

Do We Expect Too Much from Health Insurance?

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A recent study reports that out of 1,878 people age 19 to 64 polled by telephone, 89% of those who were seeking to buy health insurance in the last 3 years did not do so. “One in five people were turned down or charged a higher premium for individual insurance because of an existing medical condition…. Read more about Do We Expect Too Much from Health Insurance?

United Healthcare of Colorado on Out-of-Network Policy

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I’ve been getting a few calls from people asking me about the article “When Choice of Doctor Drives Up Other Bills” in the New York Times yesterday. The article is about Irene Greco’s health insurance claim, who is insured by Oxford Health Plans in New York. She had her operation at a hospital that was… Read more about United Healthcare of Colorado on Out-of-Network Policy

Health Insurance Is A Different Business

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United Healthcare let their contract lapse with HealthOne because they wanted to “keep premiums affordable”. “We still feel as strongly as ever that if we accepted a rate increase they are asking for, that would be directly opposed to our objective of making health insurance affordable in metro Denver.” Even a single-digit increase “will price… Read more about Health Insurance Is A Different Business

Caz Matthews Comes Back to Denver

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Caz Matthews led Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Colorado as President from 1999 to 2005.  In that time, she turned around the company from having unorganized customer service and a sinking financial outlook.  After the merger of Anthem Inc. and WellPoint,  Caz left Colorado to lead Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia; which was… Read more about Caz Matthews Comes Back to Denver