Autism affects thousands of American families every day. In most cases, families must go into debt to pay for the comprehensive therapy they feel their children need; behavioral therapy is not covered by most insurance. Utah state senator Howard Stephenson and state representative Roger Barrus (both R) plan to change all that. In January, they [...]
Archive for December, 2008
Healthy Families To Keep Open Enrollement Open Through June
California’s state sponsored health insurance program for working poor and uninsured children received a last minute contribution from First 5 California. The $16.8 Million contribution will allow Healthy Families California to continue accepting new members through June of ’09. Without this last minute lifeline, an estimated 162,000 California children would have went without health insurance [...]
Ohio Health Care Expansion
Ohio is one of only two US states that are planning on expanding their publicly funded health insurance programs (such as Medicaid and Healthy Start Ohio). The other state planning to do so is West Virginia. 19 Other states are making cuts to their programs, or are considering doing so. Although the state hasn’t made [...]
Insurance Against Losing Your Health Insurance?
Golden Rule, a United HealthCare company, is offering a unique insurance product. The plan allows workers, who fear that they might get laid-off and subsequently lose their employer-sponsored health coverage, to pay a fee in order to be covered by a Golden Rule health insurance policy in case they lose their job and become uninsured. [...]
Maternity Coverage in Florida
Women of child-bearing age (19 to 55 years old) pay more for health insurance than men, says Linda A. Firestone, Ph.D in the Sun-Sentinel. A typical woman’s policy includes maternity coverage, which accounts for the gender disparity in insurance rates. Since the majority of American adult women eventually have children, health insurance with maternity coverage [...]
Uninsured & Middle-Aged in Illinois
Judith Graham from the Chicago Tribune’s Triage blog has mentioned that the state of Illinois is now suffering from an epidemic of 50 to 64 year-olds without health insurance. These individuals are caught between a rock and a hard place–they often suffer from pre-existing conditions that preclude buying individual health coverage on the open market, [...]
Cover Florida Program To Launch January 5
Earlier this week, 6 health insurance companies in Florida signed contracts with the state to offer affordable health insurance to the uninsured in Florida. The health insurance offerings vary, but in general are less than $100 per month. The program championed by Florida Governor Charlie Christ is called Cover Florida, and will launch on January [...]
Highmark to open health insurance stores
In an interesting move, Highmark Blue Shield, has announced their plans to open two retail health insurance stores in Pennsylvania offering individual health insurance, as well as small business health plans, and senior health plans. The stores called Highmark Direct will open in Pittsburgh and Mechanicsburg in March of 2009. More information about Pennsylvania health [...]
Health Insurance Mandate
A recent research poll, funded by Consumer Watchdog, found that only 15% of Americans would support a proposal by health insurance companies to make it mandatory for all Americans to be able to show proof of health insurance coverage or face fines or tax penalties. President-elect, Barack Obama strongly opposed legislation that would mandate health [...]
Washington Basic Health Plan Reducing Membership
According to The Seattle Times, starting Friday, Washington will begin to reduce their membership in the Washington Basic Health Plan. The health plan, which is subsidized by taxpayers, provides health insurance to more than 100,000 low income Washington residents. The enrollment is part of a drastic attempt to balance the state budget, but couldn’t come [...]
