Save Money on Health Insurance!

The top fifteen best medical insurance plans ranked by health enrollment for 2010 are: Health Insurance Company Total Medical Enrollment 1 UnitedHealth Group/ United Health One 32,824,278 2 WellPoint 28,812,895 3 Aetna Health Plans 18,140,023 4 Health Care Service Corporation 12,277,678 5 CIGNA Health Insurance 11,443,392 6 Kaiser Permanente Insurance 8,755,013 7 Humana One Insurance 8,334,800 8 Health Net Insurance 5,560,000 9 Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan 4,338,022 10 Highmark 4,214,412 11 AmeriHealth/ Independence Blue Cross 3,760,448 12 Blue Cross [...]

A key provision of the new healthcare law designed to promote affordable medical insurance is called the “minimum loss ratio” or MLR for short. It requires health insurance companies in the individual medical insurance marketplace to spend no less than 80% of every premium dollar collected from customers on claims. This includes expenses for medical services and supplies, such as hospitalization, surgery, office visits, x-ray, lab and prescription drugs. Along with claims, health insurance companies can also spend money on [...]

The state of Washington’s largest health insurance company, Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, is under fire again with insurance regulators. The company has been instructed to fix recurring administrative errors that impact thousands of their members. The Insurance Commissioners from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Utah recently met with Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield. The regulators contend the problems are not one time, non-recurring situations. The issues include: providing incomplete and inadequate responses to insurance commissioner complaint letters denying contraceptive claims incorrectly [...]

Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, Iowa’s dominant health insurer is considering staying out of the state’s planned health insurance exchange- a move that could hamstring the initiative. A spokesperson for the company said that it hasn’t decided whether it would offer coverage through Iowa’s planned health medical insurance exchange.Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield provides three-quarters of it medical insurance plans to Iowa individuals, families and the self employed, and small employers, roughly 1.8 million Iowans. Medical insurance exchanges are expected to [...]

Cigna Corp. is prepared for the implementation of the health insurance exchanges in 2014, President and Chief Executive Officer David Cordani said in a conference call announcing strong second-quarter results. Many details of the medical insurance exchanges are still to be developed, including fundamental operations, which states will participate and subsidy levels, Cordani said. “But based on what we know today, our team has a clear position on which markets we would participate in and the design of the products [...]

Five health insurers, including two of the nation’s largest, have decided to stop selling individual medical insurance plans in Indiana —a trend that prompted the Indiana Department of Insurance to request a phase-in of key parts of the 2010 new healthcare law. Aetna Health Plans and Cigna Health Insurance, which are the third and fifth largest health insurers respectively, have announced their departure from Indiana’s individual health insurance market. In addition, Pekin Insurance, American Community Mutual Insurance Co. and Guardian [...]

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan on Friday appealed a U.S. District Court judge’s denial to dismiss a federal and state lawsuit against the insurer that alleges the Blues’ use of certain hospital contracts stifles competition and drives up costs for consumers. The Blues have appealed to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court after Detroit federal Judge Denise Page Hood said in June she was refusing the insurer’s request to dismiss the case, which was filed last fall by the U.S. [...]

Aetna Health Plans and Coventry Health Care Inc. challenge decision by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to deny their subsidiaries a share of a $2.2 billion Medicaid privatization program, according to the TimesPicayne.com. Both Aetna and Coventry Health Care of Louisiana Inc. say that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration did not follow its own rules in scoring 10 firms’ proposals for managed-care networks that will serve more than two-thirds of Louisiana’s 1.2 million Medicaid recipients. The firms also are [...]

The new healthcare law has significantly changed how individual medical insurance plans are sold, according to Assurant Health’s president and ceo. Minimum loss ratios or “MLR’s” are now in place which means health insurance companies are now required to spend 80 cents on every premium dollar to pay medical claims (individual medical insurance market). Previously, this figure was as low as 50 cents in the first year for some medical insurance plans. Proponents of MLR’s contend they will make medical [...]