Health Insurance Blog

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 will introduce a bill in the state legislature that would mandate providers of Utah health insurance to cover treatment for autism.

In the Salt Lake Tribune, Heather May outlined the provisions of this bill:

• The bill will only cover treatment for autistic children under 5 years of age, because that’s when therapy is said to have the greatest impact.
• The type of treatment covered by the bill is most likely to be ABA therapy (applied behavior analysis), which consists of up to 40 hours a week of one-on-one therapy that helps autistic children learn to communicate and teaches them appropriate social skills. ABA is widely considered to be effective, but it has been criticized by some for being an unproven method.
• Companies that are self-insured, as well as the federal government, will be excluded from the health care coverage mandate.
• The insurance will have a $30,000 annual cap, as well as a lifetime cap.
• The bill will also require families to contribute financially.

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 for at least the next six months.

The Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, which runs the Healthy Families program, had scheduled a meeting for today December 17th  to limit new enrollments into the health care program, which currently provides California health insurance for 900,000 children who would otherwise be uninsured.

First 5 California is an organization that is tasked with improving the healthcare of young children in California.

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 a firm spending commitment, they have received approval to expand the children’s health insurance program in 2009.

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.

The cost savings for the member would come into play when the monthly premiums required to be covered by Golden Rule would be substantially less than health coverage from COBRA.

For Example, COBRA replacement coverage for a husband and wife could cost $500-$800 per month, whereas similar coverage via the Golden Rule health plan would cost $385 per month once enrolled + $77 per month now for the right to access the plan later.

The plan is called UnitedHealth Continuity.  It is currently available in 25 states, and over time, Golden Rule plans to make it available in all 40 states where they currently do business.

The cost savings seem pretty speculative unless you would expect to be on COBRA for several months.  If you didn’t get laid off, you would be spending $77 a month for nothing, although I guess that is what insurance is all about….peace of mind.

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 makes sense for them–especially if there are pregnancy or birth complications.

Group health insurance plans (for example, those provided by employers) in Florida do not allow women to opt out of maternity coverage. If a woman does not plan to have children, she can choose to buy one of many individual health plans, which allow her to opt out of maternity coverage. In fact, many insurance providers (such as Humana), no longer offer maternity coverage in their plans. Insurance specialist Larry Wides says the cost savings from a group plan tend to cancel out the reduced premiums resulting from the elimination of maternity coverage.

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, but aren’t yet old enough to qualify for Medicare.

An AARP/Disability Advocates of Chicago report found that over 287,000 (13.3%) adults in the 50-64 age group are uninsured. 44% of poor adults in this age range lack health insurance.

Unfortunately, the current corruption scandal involving Ill. Governor Rod Blagojevich is distracting the state from its governing duties, including dealing with health care. Get the best Illinois health insurance quotes, regardless of your age.

(Photo credit: Cuksis under CC 2.0)

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 5, 2009.  The plan was unanimously approved by the Florida Legislature and require no tax dollars to make it happen.

The six participating health insurers will offer 25 health plans options between them, and each with 2 different benefit levels (one focusing on catastrophic coverage & hospital coverage, and the other on preventive care).

Of the six health insurance companies only offerings by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida and United HealthCare are available in all 67 Florida counties.

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 insurance, and health insurance companies serving PA residents.

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 insurance for all.

Other Findings in research:

40% of those surveyed were strongly opposed to mandating that all Americans have health insurance or face penalties, and 51% in total were proposed.

The full report can be found at http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/healthcarepolltabs.pdf

More healthinsurancesort.com coverage of health care reform

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 at a worse time for Washington’s low-income residents who have fallen on tough times due to the seonomic downturn.

Enrollees in The Basic Health Plan pay a fee based on how much they earn. The most an individual can make and qualify is $22,800 a year, and the average cost to taxpayers for each person is $217 a month.

More information about Washington health insurance plans.