Health Insurance Blog

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland wants to enact a cap on individual health insurance premiums, according to an Associated Press article. In order to cover up to 52,000 uninsured individuals, Ohio health insurance companies will not be allowed to charge more than one and one-half times (150%) the lowest amount they would charge to someone of the same gender and age. Strickland believes that this measure will be especially helpful to those with pre-existing conditions; their premiums can often be prohibitively expensive.

While the cap would decrease premiums by up to 70%, the Ohio Insurance Department has calculated that it would result on a 5.5% increase in the cost of individual health insurance on average. However, less than 5% of Ohio’s population buys health insurance on the individual market.

Bobby Caina Calvan from the Sacramento Bee reports that the state of California has settled with Anthem Blue Cross regarding its cancellation of individual health insurance policies. The settlement requires that the insurer reinstate coverage for those whose policies were unfairly rescinded between 2004 and 2008, regardless of any medical conditions they may have. Qualified consumers will be contacted over the next three months via phone. In addition, Anthem Blue Cross must reimburse $14 million worth of out-of-pocket health expenses paid by these consumers.

The California health insurance company also has to pay a $1 million fine to the Insurance Department, with an extra $2 million tacked on if they fail to change their policies, Bobby says.

While COBRA is helpful as individual health insurance to those who have been laid off, it is temporary and far more expensive than employer-sponsored health insurance, says Enhanced Online News. Even though the economic stimulus package proposes to pay up to half the cost of COBRA premiums for one year, one of several alternatives may be better suited to your health care needs. All of these options will ensure that you don’t experience a long gap in coverage.

If you expect to find a job with health benefits in the relatively near future, short term health insurance might be your best bet.

If you are generally healthy, high-deductible plans can help you save money on insurance while unemployed. They offer catastrophic coverage with lower premiums and few fringe benefits.

If you had family health insurance at your last employer, buying individual health plans for each member could actually be cheaper than buying a family plan on the open market. Children may also be eligible for enrollment in government-funded health programs like SCHIP.

No matter your situation, get health insurance quotes from various insurers; you may find a better deal than COBRA from another company.

(Photo credit: erik! under CC 2.0)

House Bill 1143, a Bill that would allow HMOs in Colorado to offer limited benefit plans, received bi-partisan support from the house on Tuesday.  Although the Bill doesn’t specifically lay out what the limited benefit structure would be but Republican Spenser Swalm as well as other supporters believe benefits would be capped in the $30,000 to $50,000 range, and the health plans would be required to maintain coverage for state mandated health benefits.

Speculation is that premiums for these limited benefit plans would be 20-35% less than full coverage

The Bill received final house approval following a 40-25 vote.  Approval from the senate is still required, and is the next step in the process.

State legislators in Wisconsin want to tighten individual health insurance regulations, reports Guy Bolton in the Milwalkee Journal-Sentinel. Currently, medical coverage can be denied or taken away if a person fails to disclose any pre-existing medical condition. The bill, which is supported by the state’s Insurance Commissioner, is said to be more consumer-friendly. For example, it would narrow the standard for a “pre-existing condition”: only conditions that were diagnosed by a doctor would qualify. 

Under the law, Wisconsin health insurance companies would also be allowed to look for only pre-existing conditions that occured in the past year, as opposed to being able to look back on whole lifetimes for the purposes of rescinding health insurance. Among other provisions, it would also appoint an independent regulator to examine rejections.

According to the Palm Beach Post, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSFL) has enrolled a paltry 266 Florida residents in the Cover Florida Program since in inception at the turn of the year.

The Cover Florida Program, as previously discussed here, is a program championed by Governor Charlie Christ to help Florida’s 4 million residents without health insurance coverage, find affordable health coverage.  Health insurance companies that participate in the Cover Florida Program can offer low cost health insurance plans because they are permitted to offer bare-bones health plans that don’t conform with mandated benefits in Florida.

The low enrollment #s in the program can partly be explained by the fact that neither the state of Florida, nor BCBSFL have marketed the health plan agressively.

Judith Graham from the Chicago Tribune recently wrote about the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan, and its coverage for those individuals unable to buy Illinois health insurance elsewhere. There is a cap on the number of people that can enroll (currently almost 6,000) in order to ensure that its costs are fully covered by state funding and its premiums, which can’t be higher than 150% of what a regular insurance premium costs in the market. This program is reserved for U.S. citizens and legal residents, and has a $2.5 million cap on lifetime benefits, according to Judith.

Currently, Illinois has about a thousand slots remaining in ICHIP’s traditional pool, so it’s worth looking into if you have unsuccessfully attempted to buy individual health coverage or suffer from certain chronic, uninsurable conditions including:

• Juvenile diabetes
• AIDS
• leukemia
• Parkinson’s disease
• multiple sclerosis
• cystic fibrosis

This program is different from the HIPAA plan, which is intended for those who have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance and exhausted their COBRA unemployment insurance.

In a recent press release, Medica has announced that they are launching a public information program to help Minnesota residents who have lost their jobs find affordable health insurance options.   Minnesota’s unemployment rate was 6.9% and growing as of the end of 2008.  In a nutshell, the objective of the program is to let Minnesota residents know that their are health insurance options that are more viable than COBRA coverage, particularly for those out of work.

According to a recent study, which examines COBRA from an affordability perspective, receiving Minnesota health insurance coverage for a family via COBRA would absorb about 70% on average of that families unemployment benefits.

Medica’s information campaign will include newspaper advertising, billboards, radio spots, advertising on job search sites and social networking sites such as Facebook, and more.

The New York State legislature has approved an increase in health insurance taxes to reduce the budget deficit, according to Alphonso O’Neil-White in the Buffalo News. Approximately $350 million worth of “patient services surcharges” and “covered lives assessments” (among other names for the fees) will be added to the already expensive cost of New York health insurance. There might be more to come: the upcoming budget for 2009-2010 looks to include about $420 million in new health insurance taxes and surcharges.

Alphonso states that the average NY State family pays anywhere from $900 to $1,500 per year of their health care premiums solely on these taxes! Also, these taxes make employers increasingly unable to afford to provide health insurance to their employees. More people will become uninsured and have to search for individual health coverage as a result.

The bill that will provide government sponsored health insurance to millions of low-income children across the country was signed into law by President Obama earlier this week.  Currently about 7 million children nationally receive health insurance through state funded programs, but millions still fall through the cracks and remain uninsured.  Estimates project that this program will allow an additional 4 million children to receive health coverage nationwide.

The federal program will mean 24,000 uninsured North Carolina children who didn’t qualify for NC Health Choice, North Carolina’s state sponsored health insurance program for children.  The new eligibility requirements go into effect on April 1, 2009

More North Carolina health insurance resources.