Health Insurance Blog

The state of Utah has launched a “health insurance exchange”.  Through a state run website,  participating small businesses in Utah will be able to offer employees a health care stipend, which workers can in turn use to shop on the site and select an individual health insurance plan that best fits their needs.

Utah has partnered with eHealthinsurance.com to provide the comparison shopping engine, which includes five health insurance carriers collectively offering 72 different Utah health insurance plans.

Through the health insurance plans participating on the eHealthinsurance platform, Utah health insurance rates are as low as $35/mo for an individual or $135 for a family, according to a Salt Lake Tribune article.

ehealthinsurance.com will now offer sixteen individual health insurance plans to their website customers who reside in Massachusetts.

Until now, ehealthinsurance offered no online health insurance quoting or any type of health insurance options for website visitors who resided in a handful of states which included Massachusetts.

A new relationship with Fallon Community Health Plans (FCHP)will allow eHealth to provide access to Massachusetts individual health insurance options to their customers in that state.

More information about Massachusetts health insurance.

Ehealthinsurance.com has announced that Celtic Insurance Company has adopted their eApproval process when applying for both individual health insurance and short term health plans.

By implementing the eApproval technology, health insurance shoppers will be able to submit health insurance applications online with an online signature and then receive an instant approval or decline from Celtic.  If they are accepted they can pay online electronically and receive their enrollment materials via email.

Celtics individual health insurance product portfolio includes:  The Celtic Basic Health Plan — a low-cost major medical plan, the CeltiCare Preferred Health Plan for individuals and families, the CelticSaver HSA Health Plan and the Celtic Short-term Health Plan.

AllWebLeads an Austin based insurance lead aggregater has launched a COBRA insurance information site, to help laid off individuals educate themselves about COBRA and COBRA alternatives.  The website is www.cobra-insurance.com

Previously ehealthinsurance.com as well as other health insurance companies have launched stand alone websites that provide COBRA related educational resources.

Individual health insurance plans are viable and affordable health insurance alternaives to COBRA, even when considering the Government backed COBRA subsidy.

According to a recent eHealthinsurance study, comprehensive maternity coverage was only available in 12% of the 3,500 individual health insurance plans surveyed.  Non-comprehensive maternity coverage was offered by an additional 9% of health plans surveyed.

The 3,500 health insurance plans were geograghically diverse, and represented 47 US states.

Women who are shopping for an individual health insurance plan should ask the insurer or agent the following questions to make sure they will be covered properly

• Is there an out-of-pocket maximum for maternity coverage?
• Are there waiting periods before maternity coverage kicks in?
• Am I covered out-of-network ?
• Is my obstetrician or hospital in-network?
• Is there a deductible or co-pay for prenatal, delivery and postpartum services?
• Does the policy pay for a home birth or birth center delivery?

A recent press release by eHealthinsurance.com introduces the launch of a COBRA Subsidy Calculator that can be found on their sister website CobraLearning.com.

The tool was developed to help educate unemployed Americans about how the new stimulus package will effect their COBRA coverage costs as well as what other affordable health insurance options are available.

The COBRA calculator allows health insurance shoppers to input the cost of their monthly COBRA premiums and calculate the out of pocket costs after the 65% subsidy. The calculator also gives shoppers the option to input basic information (gender, date of birth, zip code) to view anonymous quotes on individual health insurance plans as an alternative to COBRA.

A recent study undertaken by online health insurance marketplace ehealthinsurance.com found that individual health insurance can indeed be affordable if you shop around.

Specifically, the study of more than 225,000 individual and family health plans purchased through their site found that the average monthly premium to insure an individual was $158, and more than half of those underlying policies had a monthly premium of less than $130!  When insuring a family, the average monthly premium was $366 with more than half paying less than $300 per month.

To build on a previous health insurance study that was blogged about here, women paid more for their health insurance coverage, 18% more to be exact.  On average women paid $171 per month while men paid $145 on average.

Other findings:

• 60% of children’s health plans had monthly premiums of less than $100.  These do not include state sponsored and subsidized children’s health plans which have income limits for qualification.
• Regionally the Midwest was the cheapest region with average monthly premiums of $130, followed by the West region ($150), South ($154), and Northeast ($239)
• Average monthly premium for HSA health plans was $133

There have been several articles published within the last week, most notably in the New York Times regarding health insurance rates paid by women compared to rates paid by men.  The article used health insurance quote data gathered from such health insurance companies as Humana, Aetna, and Wellpoint as well as online health insurance marketplace ehealthinsurance.com, and state high-risk pools.

The article in the New York Times sites several examples of price discrepancies between women and men of similar ages for identical coverage levels at various health insurance companies.  The data is rather compelling as the health insurance rate differences are in the 30-50% range.  However, does anyone really believe that health insurance companies are unfairly setting rates artificially high for women?

The article mentions the comparatively high health care expenses for women during child bearing years, but later dispels this as the sole explanation siting that the wide range in premiums couldn’t possibly be justified by actuarial analysis.

It would have been a more compelling analysis, and further solidified the argument if the author went on to compare health insurance rates for a 60 year old man vs women, an age when men’s health issues become more prominent.

After a quick analysis comparing rates on ehealthinsurance.com, an elderly man can expect to pay about 5% more than an elderly women for identical coverage levels.  The results of this quick test were not quite the results that I was looking for that would invalidate the argument that women are being gouged on their health insurance rates.  But my gut feeling tells me that the disparity between a women’s and men’s expected health care costs in their mid 30s, for example, are indeed magnitudes apart, and health insurance  companies are appropriately planning for potential claims.

The department of insurance (DOI) in each state must approve health insurance premiums based on claims history, and actuarial analysis, and would not approve rates if the this analysis didn’t support the rates  they requested.