Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts related to families and health insurance, Covered California, Medi-Cal, split family enrollments.
The identification of a decent health insurance plan has been like trying to identify edible mushrooms. So many mushrooms look the same: white stem with a cap on top. If you pick the wrong mushroom for dinner it could kill you, just like health insurance. Covered California has created some booklets, or field guides, to help people spot and identify the best health insurance for their family from within the new health insurance market place opening October, 2013.
Rarely will I introduce Walker, as “my son” to somebody and I have never told him he must do something because he is “my son.” The absolute weakest excuse for compelling a child to modify his or her actions is because you own them in some weird parental sense.
One of the spillover effects from the Affordable Care Act is that the insurance companies are streamlining not only their health insurance plans but their ancillary insurance products like dental and vision. Anthem Blue Cross has just released new dental and vision plans that are straight forward and easy to understand.
Aetna hinted in their announcement that a combination of the new health insurance exchange and required benefits forced them to pull the plug on their individual plans. In recent years, Aetna has never been very competitive in terms of price with other carriers such as Anthem Blue Cross, Health Net and Blue Shield of California
California residents were invited to ask questions about the new Covered California health plans in a live chat held through Facebook this past Thursday. Ken Wood, Senior Advisor for Products, Marketing and Health Plan Relationships for Covered California, answered 47 questions over 90 minutes. While fourteen of the questions dealt with different aspects of the health plans being offered, the bulk of the questions focused on income requirements for the tax credits and coverage options for different family scenarios.
Health care reform, which was suppose to make health insurance affordable, may force employees in group plans to make unaffordable choices.
I’ve talked with numerous people who, like me, had high hopes that CO-OPs would be a consumer focused option where the business model was not driven by profits.
This family quarrel is taking place in the twitter sphere over whether #UniteBlue is defender and connector of progressive tweeters or a conservative Trojan horse being pushed into the twitter family room.
There is the possibility that under the health insurance exchange and the construction of the new individual plans we could see premium rates less than what is being quoted today.
While there is no doubt that healthcare costs are escalating, there may be other reasons beyond pure inflation that is driving Anthem and other carriers to seek rate increases.
