Health Insurance Blog

The five largest New Jersey health insurance companies and five physician groups have launched a pilot program to reduce administrative costs by allowing hospitals and physicians to communicate directly with health plans and address administrative tasks through a web portal.

The pilot is sponsored by AHIP and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.  If the pilot proves successful and can be rolled out nationally, representatives from AHIP believe hundreds of billions of dollars can be saved annually.

The participating health plans include:Aetna, Amerihealth, Horizon BCBS, CIGNA, and United Healthcare.
AHIP undertook a similar pilot with Ohio health plans in October.  That pilot program is still underway.

The state of California has launched a website that will help California residents select the best PPO health plan for their needs.  The site contains both summary ratings as well as more detailed underlying metrics of each plan measured.

California has provided similar information to HMO customers since 2002.

Their are currently 5 California PPOs measured on the site, and none of them received an overall 4 star rating (highest score).  Aetna, Cigna and Healthnet each received 3 stars while Anthem and United HealthCare received 2 stars.  Blue Shield of California was late on providing data necessary to included in ratings amd will be included in ratings in 2011.

More information about California health insurance.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) doesn’t advertise their Medicare Supplement plans because they are such money losers for the company.  BCBSM has a dominant market position with nearly 60% market share, and the second largest Medicare Supplement membership rests with United Healthcare who maintains just under 20% of the market.

Several other health insurance carriers in Michigan are trying to take advantage of the fact that BCBSM’s is not marketing their plans aggressively by launching products of their own in Michigan in 2010.  Priority Health, Aetna, and Blue Care Network (a subsidiary of BCBSM), will all launch Medicare Supplement offerings to Michigan residents in 2010.  In addition, Health Alliance Plan began selling Medicare Supplements in 2008.

More information about Michigan health insurance.

Open enrollment for Medicare Advantage plans is rapidly approaching (November 15 - December 31).  We thought we’d blog about some of the top rated plans in each state according to US News and World Reports annual rankings.

In California, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan boasts the 2 top ranked plans in the state. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Southern California was the top rated Medicare health plan in California with an overall score of 88.1, followed by Kaiser’s plan covering Northern California (86.8).  These two plans were followed by Health Net of California (83.2), Pacificare of California (81.7) and Aetna Health of California (80.4).

None of the twenty California Medicare Plans ranked in this study received a customer assessment score of greater than three stars out of five.  However, both Kaiser plans faired very well in both treatment and prevention measures, with five stars.

More information about California health insurance.

Aetna has announced that they are discontinuing two Medicare Advantage Plans.  The first is being shut down because its membership dropped below the Federal requirement of at least 100 members.  It had 75 members.  The other is being phased out in all but 5 states due to a new Federal requirement that all fee for service Medicare Advantage plans be network based by 2011.

In similar news, Independence Blue Cross is terminating plans that current cover about 44,000 seniors.

If you have lost your Medicare Advantage plan, you can shop for replacement coverage here at healthinsurancesort.com

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida Plans to sell individual health insurance plans via storefront on a larger scale in the future. BCBSFL who has had an operational health insurance storefront in Pembroke Pines for more than a year plans to expand to five to eight stores across the state.

Individual health insurance have become much more popular health insurance alternatives as the recession has cost thousands their employer sponsored health coverage.

• Aetna reports that their individual health insurance sales in Florida are up 22% over the past 6 months.
• BCBS Florida’s individual health insurance “requests” are up 15% over the past 8 months.

While some say that individual health plans are the least cost effective for the customer because of high administrative costs, they can be quite effective and inexpensive for the young and healthy in particular.

Other similar health insurance storefronts in Florida include an AvMed store in Hollywood aimed at Medicare Seniors, and about a dozen Humana stores across the state.

More about Florida health insurance.

When JD Power & Associates rated the top health plans in Pennsylvania, they also included Delaware in a region which included both Pennsylvania & Delaware.  However, of the eleven private health insurance companies that were included in the study and part of this region, eight of them where Pennsylvania health plans, and the three that weren’t exclusively Pennsylvania plans (Aetna, CIGNA, and UnitedHealthCare) did not factor into consideration among the top plans and were all rated as being below average in overall experience.

According to the study, the top health insurance plan in Pennsylvania was Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, which was also judged to be one of the best the nation has to offer.  Finishing a close second to Highmark BCBS, was another Highmark inc. company and Blue Cross Blue Shield Licensee Highmark Blue Shield.

Highmark BCBS serves health insurance customers in Western Pennsylvania, while Highmark Blue Shield serves Central PA.

Other Pennsylvania health plans that fared particularly well in the study include Capital BlueCross and Geisinger Health Plan, both were rated above average.

In JD Power & associates 2009 rankings of the top health plans in Ohio, Medical Mutual took top honors.  Based on JD Power surveys, Medical Mutual of Ohio is among the best health plans in the country.

Humana is the 2nd best health plan in Ohio according to this study of well over 100 health plans nationally, and also among the best in the country.  Other Ohio health plans that were rated include:  Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield & Aetna which were both rated as average, and CIGNA & UnitedHealthCare which were rated as below average.

More information about Ohio health insurance.

US News Top Ohio Health Plans

JD Power & Associates ranked Humana the top rated health plan in Texas for 2009, in overall customer experience.  In addition to being rated as the top health plan in Texas, The Humana health plan that operates in Texas was rated as being among the best in the nation ( 5 out of 5 stars).

Other private health plans that faired well included CIGNA & Aetna who each received 4 of 5 stars, which denotes them as being better than most.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas was rated as below average, one of the few Blue Cross Blue Shield member health plans that did not fair well in the JD Power survey.  BCBSTX was rated below average.

More information about Texas health insurance.

J.D. Power & Associates rated Health Alliance Plan (HAP) as the top health plan in Michigan for 2009.  Michigan is one of the few “regions” in this study of well over 100 health insurance companies from coast-to-coast, where a Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plan was not recognized as being the top plan.

Health Alliance Plan of Michigan was selected as the top health plan in Michigan and among the top plans in the nation in terms of overall customer experience.

Both, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Priority Health were rated as average when compared to the 100+ health plans included in the study and Aetna was rated as below average.

More information about Michigan health insurance.