Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts related to Blue Shield of California, primarily individual and family plans, billing issues, enrollment, health plans, small groups, Medicare.
Blue Shield apology Sutter Health Information Blue Shield and Sutter sign a new two-year contract We are pleased to announce that Blue Shield and Sutter Health have signed a new two-year agreement effective February 1, 2015. This means that Sutter hospitals and doctors will continue to be participating providers in the Blue Shield network. We apologize […]
In 2014 the combination of Covered California’s enrollment issues and Blue Shield’s bumbling billing system created massive headaches for Blue Shield’s members and their staff. With the dawn of 2015 we have witnessed that Blue Shield of California still hasn’t resolved many billing issues for individuals and families attempting to enroll in their health and […]
Sutter Health patients love their doctors. Blue Shield of California has created a small public relations nightmare with their members when they announced that they would be dropping Sutter Health from their network of providers in 2015. To combat the image that Blue Shield is the bad guy in this battle of corporate health care titans, […]
January 30th: Blue Shield and Sutter sign 2015 contract update January 5th Blue Shield Sutter falling out below Blue Shield of California jolted their members with a New Year’s announcement that they were dropping Sutter Health hospitals and doctors from many of their plans for 2015. The reason given was that Blue Shield was not […]
Blue Shield of California announced that it was getting a slice of the lucrative government Medi-Cal pie with its acquisition of Care1st of Los Angeles County. Blue Shield has been missing the easy money of Medi-Cal payments that Blue Cross, Health Net and Kaiser have been receiving from different California counties when they offer a Medi-Cal managed care HMO […]
There was tremendous confusion over which doctors were in-network for the new individual and family plans offered through Covered California in early 2014. While the major health insurance plans offering PPO and EPO plans maintained the provider networks were the same regardless of whether they were purchased on or off the exchange, doubts persisted fueled […]
One would assume that the probabilities of a second Covered California enrollment nightmare would be less than being struck by lightning. But for one family, lightning has struck not once, but twice. Covered California and Blue Shield have teamed up to disenfranchise all but one family member because the mother delivered a healthy baby boy in […]
Six months into the new ACA health plan year and Blue Shield of California still has a broken billing system. Individuals and families who bought their 2014 health plans directly from Blue Shield and then had a change in the household members being covered are encountering issues with their invoices. Blue Shield has been unable […]
To be honest, I was fully prepared to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the Blue Shield of California corporate offices in El Dorado Hills. Numerous phone calls and emails on behalf of a client who had made his monthly premiums like clockwork, only to have his health insurance cancel, resulted in hollow promises and no action by Blue Shield to resolve the billing and cancellation nightmare. My last hope to help restore the health insurance for my long distance truck driving client was to rattle the corporate cage of the carrier.
Solid information is hard to come by when it relates to what health insurance plans will cover for gender reassignment surgery in California. In response to the Insurance Gender Non-Discrimination Act passed by California in 2013, some health plans have created detailed medical policies for transgender health benefits. For a variety of reasons the health insurance companies don’t make their policies readily available to the general public. I was able to locate two detailed outlines issued by Blue Shield of California relating to gender reassignment surgery.
