Health Insurance Blog

Given the increased attention to rising health insurance rates and the growing number of uninsured in this country, we periodically scour the web for low-cost health insurance plans from quality health insurance companies across the country and blog about one here.

Blue Options HSA is a low cost health plan for North Carolina residents offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC).  BlueOptions HSA is a high deductible health plan that is eligible to combine with an HSA.

According to BCBSNC, monthly premiums are as much as 50% lower than a traditional health plan.  Rates can be less than $60 per month for a 25 year old male.  Other affordable health insurance plans offered by BCBSNC include Blue Advantage.

More information about North Carolina health insurance.

BlueEdge is a high-deductible health plan offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBSIL) that can be combined to form an HSA. There are also BlueEdge plan options for employer groups that work in conjunction with health reimbursement arrangements.

BlueEdge also includes coverage for both preventative & wellness benefits.

Health savings accounts are effective ways to keep monthly premiums down, especially for individuals or families that are relatively healthy.

Health insurance rates for BlueEdge can be as low as $75/mo or for BlueChoice PPO as low as $58/mo.

More information about Illinois health insurance.

State Farm Health Insurance understands the variety of needs their customers have.  They have a marketing relationship with Time Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, (Assurance Health), which enables them to assist each individual.  This information was obtained from State Farm’s health insurance web page.

State Farm is offering individual medical insurance coverage, short term medical coverage and student select coverage.  They also have a high deductible health plan which can be used with a health savings account.  A health savings account is a special savings account which enables you to pay for health costs and save for future medical expenses tax free.  You own and control the money in your health savings account, and you also make decisions on what type of investments you participate in to make your savings grow.  This information was obtained from the US Treasury’s website on HSA’s. 

State Farm and Assurant health have combined company histories of 175 years which helps to make them a great team.  This alliance assists State Farm agents in fulfilling their customers’ unique needs and desires and manage the risks of life.

Although health insurance rates continue to rise, affordable health insurance can still be found.  Flexible Blue is an affordable individual health plan offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) for families and individuals who live in Michigan.

Flexible Blue is an HSA qualified health insurance plan, with monthly premiums as low as $52.82 per month for a plan with a 5000 deductible.

Maternity Coverage, and Dental Insurance are optional packages that can be added to your Flexible Blue health insurance plan

More information about Michigan 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.

Since the Healthy Indiana government-subsidized health care program was opened to adults without children in January 2008, it has given thousands greater access to Indiana health insurance. According to the Courier-Journal’s Leslie Stedman Weidenbener, the plan has been so successful that many people are on a waiting list to enroll (due to limited program funds). State legislators negotiated an exception to Medicaid regulations that limit the program to families. 34,000 out of 49,000 enrollees are adults without children who are unable to afford individual health insurance.

People covered under the Healthy Indiana program must pay a sliding scale monthly premium based on their income (from $20 to $75).

What’s included under the Healthy Indiana plan?

1. $500 in free preventative care each year
2. An annual health savings account (HSA) of $1,100
3. After the HSA is spent, there is a traditional health insurance plan without co-payments or deductibles.

To qualify for the Healthy Indiana program, Leslie writes that a childless adult must meet the following requirements:

• They must work for a company that doesn’t offer health insurance (so employers can’t drop them from their coverage and shift the burden onto the state)
• A single adult can make no more than $21,660 per year, or 200% of the poverty level
• They must have been without health insurance for at least six months.

Several individual health plans from AvMed have been introduced in Florida’s Miami-Dade and Broward counties, states a press release. They suggest these plans would be most appropriate for these groups:

• self-employed individuals
• students
• early retirees
• people laid off/between jobs

The AvMed Individual Health policies’ benefits include some preventative care without a deductible, a maximum lifetime benefit of $5 million and full integration with Health Savings Accounts. An innovative three-month deductible carry-over lessens the burden of Florida health insurance costs by applying payments made in the last three months of one year to the following year’s deductible.

A variety of AvMed health insurance options with different levels of coverage are available to individuals and families; there are also plans specifically reserved for children (ages 2 through 17). If these new offerings are successful, the release claims that they will be expanded statewide.

Find more information about Miami health insurance.

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

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association recently released the findings of a research study which concluded that health insurance shoppers are much more vigilant about both their health as well as their health care related costs when they are enrolled in a consumer-directed health plan (CDHP).

Specifically, the report entitled 2008 CDHP Member Experience Survey found that members enrolled in CDHPs were:

• 30% more likely to track their health care expenses and
• 27%  more likely to ask their doctor about the costs of treatments before moving forward

In addition, enrollees were more proactive in seeking preventative care such as check-ups, physicals, and preventive screenings.

In aggregate, Blue Cross Blue Shield member health plans cover more than 4.4 million members nationally with CDHPs, of which about two-thirds are enrolled in health savings accounts.

visit http://www.bcbs.com/news/bluetvradio/consumerdriven2008/ for a webcast of the complete presentation.

In article written by Joan Mazzolini of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio health insurance rates have increased 9 times faster than the rate at which wages have risen.

From 2000 through 2007 the average cost to insure a family in Ohio through employer sponsored health coverage increased over 80% while wages rose less than 9% over that same time period.  Individual health insurance rates in Ohio increases just over 60% over the same time frame.

According to Ron Pollack of Families USA

Rising health care costs were a problem in Ohio before the current economic downturn emerged, and slow wage growth combined with significant job losses have made matters worse.

The only state that showed a larger disparity between the increase in health insurance premiums and wage growth was Michigan.

As health insurance becomes more expensive relative to earnings, many people have difficult decisions to make in order to make ends meet.  Going uninsured is never a good idea, as a serious injury or illness can leave you financially crippled.  One way to lower your monthly health insurance premiums is to change your health coverage to a plan with a higher deductible, such as an high deductible health plan combined with an HSA.