About 27,000 people who buy Personal Choice health insurance directly from Independence Blue Cross rather than through an employer are facing steep increases in their premiums in March to maintain similar coverage – for some, greater than 60 percent – or are finding comparable coverage unavailable.
Despite angry complaints from policyholders, Blue Cross says the changes are necessary because of continuing losses in the Personal Choice plans. And the state Insurance Department says there is little it can do, even after it resisted a proposal last spring to raise rates for the plans by amounts ranging from 10 percent to 58 percent.
One reason: Blue Cross side stepped the issue by withdrawing its proposed increases. Instead, it told state officials it planned to discontinue the trio of Personal Choice plans in question, which it has offered for the last two decades, and give current policyholders two new choices instead – choices many find unattractive.
State Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario said yesterday that the dilemma faced by Blue Cross and its policyholders showed the importance of revamping state and national health insurance regulation.
Ario said state regulators lacked tools they needed to better oversee insurers’ plans and rates. And he said commercial insurers’ ability to refuse to cover less-healthy customers – which would be banned under bills that have passed the U.S. House and Senate – deserves much of the blame for the changes Blue Cross is imposing.
As Pennsylvania’s “insurer of last resort,” the state’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans are required to provide so-called guaranteed issue health insurance plans to all individuals or families, regardless of their medical conditions or histories.
The Blues’ commercial competitors “are simply able to exclude the bad risks,” Ario said. But Independence Blue Cross offers its Personal Choice plans to anyone not covered by an employer’s group plan.
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20100107_Personal_Choice_nongroup_premiums_rising.html
Tags: blue cross, consumer, health insurance
Comments
I (and apparently 27,000 other people) received a letter right before Christmas saying that Independence Blue Cross was discontinuing my health plan. I either had to take a $5000 a year deductible “Value HSA”, with benefit cuts in some areas, or Basic Option has reduced benefits such as a low cap on prescription drugs. This has been a terrible experience for me with Independence Blue Cross because they gave me virtually no notice about taking away my health plan. The deadline to let them know is January 15. There was nothing about this posted for public input by the regulators either that I could find. I can not believe that there would be no consumer protection for people in Pennsylvania from actions like this.
#Do you Want to say something?