Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
The Executive Director of Covered California, Peter Lee, insinuated that Californians are being lazy when it comes to paying for the first month’s premium of their new health plan. Lee’s statement, released in a press announcement on Friday, would be laughable if it wasn’t insanely out of touch with reality. Californians have been stymied from making their first month’s premium payment because of the failures at Covered California.
The California Assembly Republican Caucus has declared that people with pre-existing conditions are the root cause of escalating health care costs. From their statements on their website Covering Health Care: A California Resource Guide, one can only come to the conclusion that California Republicans feel that sick people should be denied guarantee issue health insurance so premiums of healthy people won’t be adversely affected.
Blue Shield of California has agreed to allow upwards of 115,000 individual and family plan members to keep their existing policies through March 31, 2014. The press release from the office of Insurance Commissioner Jones indicated the agreement to allow the policy holders to keep their plans past the original December 31, 2013 cancellation date was the result of a late filing or notification requirement for plan closures on the part of Blue Shield.
California Medicare beneficiaries will have over thirty Part D Prescription Drug Plans (PDP) to choose from in 2014. But a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that upwards of 80% of individuals never switch their PDP even if new plans offer better coverage and a lower premium.
There were a total of 43,616 applications for health insurance started in the first week Covered California was open for business. An estimated 16,311 households were able to complete the entire enrollment process representing 28, 699 California residents. What Covered California did not release were the completed applications that were eligible for premium assistance and how many qualified for Medi-Cal.
Californians with individual and family plan health insurance are opening letters from their existing carriers notifying them of steep premium increases due to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The skyrocketing rate increases are leading some policy holders to question the wisdom of Obamacare. But upon closer inspection, the higher rates may not necessarily be all that they seem.
As a consequence of the Affordable Care Act, Health Net will have to discontinue offering health plans to California Farm Bureau Federation members in 2014. Current Health Net members in the affected plans will be receiving letters from the California Farm Bureau Federation (CFBF) notifying them of the discontinued health insurance.
Thousands of Medicare Advantage plan members in California are receiving letters that their health plans are closing from carriers such as Anthem Blue Cross and Health Net. Some of the health insurance companies will be leaving some counties completely while others will be offering new Medicare Advantage (MA) plans to their members. Regardless of the reasons, the plan closure triggers a Special Enrollment Period for Medicare beneficiaries to select a new plan offered in their county.
2025 IFP Blue Shield adds Virtual PCPs and Amazon Pharmacy 2024 Blue Shield Individual and Family Health, Dental and Vision Stanford Health Care Out-of-Network with Blue Shield plans, click to read more. Medical ID cards go digital in 2021 In October, we expanded our Go Paperless initiative by offering digital medical ID cards for members […]
In communication with their brokers on September 10, Health Net said they would be closing all their California individual and family plans (IFP) as of December 31, 2013. The closures do not affect their small or large group plans. The announcement cited the development of all new Affordable Care Act compliant plans as a reason for scrapping all the old ones.
