See Fifth Harmony On The Brand New <b>Blue Cross Blue Shield</b> <b>...</b>

(Photo by: Peter Kramer/ Getty Images)

Listen to win passes to come see 5H on the brand new Blue Cross Blue Shield Performance Stage on Tuesday night July 30th! Listen to B96′s Jason Cage between 7pm-12am to win!

<b>Blue Cross</b>-<b>Blue Shield</b> Bets Big On Obamacare Exchanges - Kaiser <b>...</b>

At a closed White House meeting in April, President Barack Obama told corporate insurance bosses “we’re all in this together” on implementing his signature health law. But some insurance companies seem to be more in than others.

At least five Blue Cross and Blue Shield executives sat at the table of about a dozen CEOs with the president, according to those knowledgeable about the session, first reported by the New York Times. Just as significant is who wasn’t there: chiefs of the country’s biggest and third-biggest health insurers, UnitedHealth Group and Aetna.

Those two and most other non-Blue insurers “seem to be proceeding cautiously” in the online marketplaces expected to cover to millions, said David Windley, who follows the industry for Jefferies & Co., an investment firm. “They are evaluating markets state by state and in some cases region by region within the state to assess the viability of all the different pieces.”

Not the Blues. They’re expected to offer health-exchange plans nearly everywhere, ensuring at least a minimum choice for individuals seeking subsidized coverage when the marketplaces open Oct. 1. It also makes them an undeclared Obama ally in implementing the health law.

“The Blues will definitely participate,” said Ana Gupte, an insurance stock analyst for Dowling & Partners. “If there is an exchange I’m sure there will be the Blues.”

The exchanges are online marketplaces that will operate in all 50 states, offering insurance plans for individuals and small businesses. The individual market has long been a high-risk, unstable business that some insurers never sought. The health law – with its mandate that could bring younger, healthier people into the pool and its subsidies – seeks to stabilize the individual market. But if few other insurers follow the Blues into those markets, consumers in those states may not see the same kind of competitive pricing of premiums that states like Oregon have reported.

Still, it’s not just that Blues will offer coverage in places other carriers may avoid. In states where Republican governors oppose the health law, Blues may be the single biggest factor in educating consumers and recruiting them into Obamacare.

In Louisiana, where Gov. Bobby Jindal has flatly said “we are not implementing the exchange,” the local Blues plan has organized community nonprofits, churches, chambers of commerce and food banks to get out the word on what will be a federally run marketplace there.

BlueCross BlueShield of Louisiana “is the driving force” behind the Louisiana Healthcare Education Coalition, launched in March, said Nebeyou Abebe, who works on consumer engagement at the Louisiana Public Health Institute. “I can’t think of any other entity in Louisiana that’s developing a massive campaign to educate people.”

Founded by hospitals and doctors before World War II, the Blues are a loose federation of nonprofit and for-profit plans with a history of selling coverage directly to individuals and families.

The Concerns Of Insurers

The Affordable Care Act requires exchange plans to cover anybody, no matter how sick, at regulated prices and often with large government subsidies.

Despite the prospect of millions of new customers and measures to cushion insurers with disproportionately high claims in the early years, carriers worry that the sick will be first to sign up while the healthy stay away. Fears grew after claims came in far higher than expected for temporary “high risk pools” that had been established by the law to cover the chronically ill until the full law took effect in 2014. The shortfall prompted the plans to close enrollment early.

“Insurance companies, very suddenly in my estimation, are getting very conservative and hesitant about being in the exchanges,” said Robert Laszewski, a Virginia-based consultant and former insurance executive. “All along everybody, including the companies, assumed they would be in a lot of exchanges.”

Carriers also fear Democrats will blame them if government-run online marketplaces suffer technical failures or run into other problems, Laszewski said.

UnitedHealth Group’s recent disclosure that it would offer plans in only a dozen state exchanges marked new disappointment for those hoping the exchanges will generate vigorous competition and new insurance for millions. Previously United had said it would sell on as many as 25 exchanges.

 The company will “watch and see” how exchanges work, “approaching them with some degree of caution,” UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley told analysts last month.

Aetna plans to offer individual exchange policies in 14 states and may reduce that if some states look unprofitable or unprepared, CEO Mark Bertolini said on a conference call in late April. On June 17 Aetna disclosed it would stop selling individual insurance in California, the most populous state.

For its part, Cigna will focus on making exchange plans work well in five states rather than spreading efforts more thinly, said Ray Smithberger, who’s in charge of the company’s individual business.

“What you see in the general market is just a hesitancy” over whether states will be technologically ready, he said in an interview. “With condensed time frames, it’s important that we provide the right connectivity to ensure we’re providing the best experience for the customer.”

Although not every state has announced online marketplace participants, the Blues characterize their approach very differently. “We expect Blue Cross Blue Shield plans will have a strong, reliable presence in the new exchanges,” said Alissa Fox, a senior vice president at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. “We’ve been in this market for more than 80 years and we’ve been providing coverage in every zip code to everybody. We imagine we will continue to do that.”

Five Blues executives attended the meeting with Obama on April 12 to coordinate exchange implementation: Scott Serota, CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; Florida Blue CEO Patrick Geraghty; Chet Burrell, CEO of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, with plans in Maryland and D.C.; Patricia Hemingway Hall, CEO of Health Care Service Corp., with Blues plans in four states; and WellPoint CEO Joseph Swedish. WellPoint is the No. 2 health insurer and operates Blues plans in 14 states.

The White House declined to release the full list of attendees. Nor does it comment “on the role of one company or provider” in implementing the health act, a spokeswoman said.

Protecting Their Business

Blues aren’t the only alternative to national commercial insurers. In many states there are regional nonprofits such as Group Health Cooperative in the Northwest or Presbyterian Health Plan in New Mexico. But for health coverage sold directly to consumers — the kind that will be offered on the exchanges — Blues have the most members in a large majority of states.

Protecting that business is why Blues have little choice but to offer plans in the online marketplaces, analysts said. If they abstain, they risk losing those members. Once in the game, they need to recruit as many customers as possible to avoid signing a disproportionate share of the sick.

Florida Blue, which owns about half the market in that state for individual insurance, intends to use its 11 recently opened retail centers to get out the word and will rent temporary storefronts in key neighborhoods, said Jon Urbanek, senior vice president of commercial markets for the company. Florida Blue will double the size of its call center to 200 employees as October approaches, he said.

 “In campaign terms, it’s a get-out-the-vote type of approach,” said Michelle Riddell, vice president of community investment for BlueCross BlueShield of Texas.

Like the Louisiana Blues, the Texas Blues are educating and recruiting exchange customers with little cooperation from the state. Texas and Louisiana are among 33 states leaving exchange implementation to the federal government amid questions about whether it has the resources to educate a broadly ignorant public.

The Texas insurer’s Be Covered Texas team includes Habitat for Humanity, diabetes groups, churches, social services nonprofits, the NAACP and community clinics — all putting out the Obamacare word in the state with the highest percentage of uninsured people in the country.

The campaign includes a Web site, a texting campaign and community events planned through the rest of the year. A Blues official recently spoke to the Houston congregation of Windsor Village United Methodist Church, which has more than 16,000 members. Food bank grocery bags bear printed information about health insurance. Barber shops are seen as health information hubs.

Be Covered Texas doesn’t mention Blue Cross, presenting itself as a grass-roots program. Health Care Services Corp., the parent of the Texas Blues, hasn’t disclosed how much it is spending on the Texas effort and similar outreach by its Blues plans in New Mexico, Illinois and Oklahoma, a spokesman said.

“I view this as a three-year project,” said Bert Marshall, president of BlueCross BlueShield of Texas. “I think the education piece is going to last well beyond this enrollment and well beyond the next.”

With his company holding more than half of the Texas individual insurance market, Marshall believes an early and extended campaign is a good investment. His competitors seem to have a different view.

“The Blue Cross plans… are going to be in the exchanges because it’s part of their DNA,” said Laszewski. “But the rest of the marketplace, if you go look at their block of individual business, it’s small, and it’s probably losing money.”

<b>Blue Cross Blue Shield</b> commits $10M to hospital initiative | Crain's <b>...</b>

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has committed $10 million to the Michigan Health and Hospital Association"s Keystone Center, an initiative that aims to improve patient safety and quality in hospitals across the state.

<b>Blue Cross</b> Louisiana says a select few could experience large <b>...</b>

A small number of Louisianians who buy their own health-care coverage could see significant changes in their premiums as soon as October, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana executives said Wednesday.

The vast majority of the 2 million Louisiana residents who are now commercially insured  will likely pay less or only slightly more under the provisions of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010, according to the company’s projections.

But Blue Cross officials estimated that among its nearly 1 million Louisiana customers, about 21,280 households that currently purchase insurance without going through an employer could experience premium increases of 15 percent to more than 70 percent.

That affected group accounts for about 1.3 percent of the state’s 1.6 million households according to U.S. Census figures, but it is about 28 percent of the 76,000 households that buy their insurance directly from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana.

Mike Reitz, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, told reporters during a briefing Wednesday that he anticipates hearing from those customers in the next several months.

“There’s going to be a lot of noise out there,” Reitz said. “A lot of people who felt at one time that the Affordable Care Act was going to present to them some true options that were going to remove some of the pressure of the insurance from them and their families’ budgets. But in fact, there is going to be a challenge associated with that.”

Reitz attributed some of the increase to new taxes and fees he said would be borne by carriers, employers and individuals. But company executives also cited changes that require insurers to offer richer benefits packages to people who until now opted for more bare-bones coverage, for example, as well as rules that forbid them to charge sicker customers more than healthier customers.

Moriba Karamoko, director of the Louisiana Consumer Healthcare Coalition, said he was skeptical of the projections. He said it’s impossible to discuss such rate changes without explaining the specifics of the company’s individual products.

“Premium increases have been happening for years now,” Karamoko said. “It’s a bit disingenuous to attribute premium increases to the Affordable Care Act.”

Brian Small, senior vice president and chief actuary for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, profiled five types of individual insurance customers who could be affected as thousands of uninsured people enter the marketplace beginning Oct. 1.

That’s when the federal government will make available an online exchange where people who have no coverage now — about 20 percent of Louisianians — can shop for coverage that meets the requirements of the federal law.

Those with household incomes of 100 percent to 400 percent of the federal poverty level will qualify for subsidies to help offset the cost of required insurance coverage, including people who are currently insured.

By way of example, Small said a 64-year-old woman who has health issues and an income of $43,000 now might experience a healthy rate reduction of about 50 percent under the new plan. That’s because her premium would drop from $8,240 to about $7,630 and her income makes her eligible for a $4,155 subsidy.

Meanwhile, a healthy 26-year-old man with an income of $33,000 might experience a 60 percent rise in insurance expenses because, even though he is eligible for a $75 subsidy, his premium might rise from $1,881 to $3,088.

That said, the company estimates that about 45 percent of its customers will be eligible for a subsidy because their household incomes lie within that range — roughly $12,000 to $45,000 for an individual to $95,000 for a family of four.

“Most Blue Cross customers will see no impact after subsidies take effect,” Small said.

As happened in many Republican-led states, Gov. Bobby Jindal announced that Louisiana would not establish a state-based insurance exchange as the law allowed. The federal government plans to open the exchange Oct. 1 in its place.

<b>Blue Cross</b>/<b>Blue Shield</b> Closing 65-Year-Old Sioux City, IA Office <b>...</b>

Blue Cross/Blue Shield Closing 65-Year-Old Sioux City, IA Office Due To ObamaCare

106 Workers In Blue Cross/Blue Shield’s Sioux City, IA Office Will Lose Their Jobs As A Result Of ObamaCare

Wellmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield Will Shutter Its Sioux City Office, Eliminating 106 Local Jobs Due To ObamaCare. “Citing concerns about the new federal health insurance law, Wellmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield said Wednesday it will shutter its First Administrators office in Sioux City, eliminating 106 jobs.” (Dave Dreeszen, “Sioux City Insurance Office To Close; 106 Local Jobs Lost,” Sioux City Journal , 7/10/13)

• 
  The Announcement Comes Just A Year After The Company Received The City’s “Growing Sioux City Award.” “The closing, scheduled for early 2014, comes a year after First Administrators, or FAI, completed a major renovation of the offices at 1201 Zenith Drive and nearly doubled its workforce. At a ceremony in July 2012, Mayor Bob Scott presented the company with the city’s ‘Growing Sioux City Award.’” (Dave Dreeszen, “Sioux City Insurance Office To Close; 106 Local Jobs Lost,” Sioux City Journal , 7/10/13)
   


• 
  “Wellmark … Had Operated In Sioux City For More Than 65 Years.” “Wellmark, which has operated in Sioux City for more than 65 years, did not say what it intends to do with its Zenith Drive property.” (Dave Dreeszen, “Sioux City Insurance Office To Close; 106 Local Jobs Lost,” Sioux City Journal , 7/10/13)

ObamaCare’s “Ever-Increasing Number And Complexity Of Federal Regulations, Mandates And The Rising Costs Associated With These Changes” Were To Blame. “Wellmark, Iowa’s largest health insurer, attributed the decision to the ‘ever-increasing number and complexity of federal regulations, mandates and the rising costs associated with these changes.’ Major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which revamps the nation’s health care system, take effect next year.” (Dave Dreeszen, “Sioux City Insurance Office To Close; 106 Local Jobs Lost,” Sioux City Journal , 7/10/13)

ObamaCare’s Rules And Regulations Made Doing Business In Sioux City Cost Ineffective. “After a ‘thorough review,’ Wellmark concluded it was ‘simply not cost effective’ to modify the FAI Information Technology system to meet the new rules and regulations.” (Dave Dreeszen, “Sioux City Insurance Office To Close; 106 Local Jobs Lost,” Sioux City Journal , 7/10/13)

Iowa Senate Candidate Bruce Braley Is A “Champion” And “Full-Throated Supporter” Of ObamaCare

Braley Proudly Voted For Obamacare. “After reading the bill, listening to my constituents and debating the bill’s provisions in Congress, I’m convinced this legislation is good for Iowa.” (Press Release, “Braley Statement On House Passage Of Health Care Reform,” Congressman Bruce Braley, 3/25/10)

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  Braley: “I’m Convinced This Legislation Is Good For Iowa.” (Press Release, “Braley Statement On House Passage Of Health Care Reform,” Congressman Bruce Braley, 3/25/10)
   


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  Braley: “This Legislation Will Provide Much-Needed Relief For Thousands Of Businesses In Iowa’s First District.” (Press Release, “Braley Statement On House Passage Of Health Care Reform,” Congressman Bruce Braley, 3/25/10)

Des Moines Register: “Braley Is A Full-Throated Supporter Of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.” (Jason Noble, “Medicare Divides Candidates,” Des Moines Register, 9/23/12)

Quad City Times: Braley Is A “Champion” Of ObamaCare. “Braley, a champion of the Affordable Care Act, says it’s “almost shocking” to hear Republicans talk about repealing it.” (James Q Lynch, “Braley, Lange Locked In Rematch For Seat,” Quad-City Times, 10/28/12)

In 2012, Braley Offered “Strong Support” For ObamaCare And Said People Should “Celebrate” Its Provisions. “At the Medicare event, he offered strong support for President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, the expansive health care reform derided by critics as a ‘government takeover of health care’ and a threat to the existing Medicare program for seniors. Braley dismissed such criticism point by point, and argued instead that the reforms are something people should ‘celebrate.’” (Jason Noble, “Braley Prides Himself On Service To Constituents,” Des Moines Register, 9/27/12)

Braley Celebrated The Supreme Court’s Upholding Of ObamaCare. “Democratic U.S. House 1st District Rep Bruce Braley: ‘The Supreme Court got it right today. This decision is good news for the middle class and affordable healthcare.’” (“Reaction From Around Iowa,” Muscatine Journal, 6/28/12)

Campbell Mithun's New Work for Wellmark <b>BlueCross BlueShield</b> <b>...</b>

Wellmark BlueCross BlueShield launched its latest “Promises Matter” campaign by agency Campbell Mithun with work showcasing a motorcycle crash survivor and introducing a new mobile app. The effort works to reinforces the integrity and accessibility central to Wellmark’s identity as a health insurer who strives to keep its promises in a shifting category where providers now compete fiercely for consumers. “Promises should matter to a health insurance provider, that’s why we’re here,” said Tracy Smith, director of brand communications at Wellmark. “This work reinforces that message of integrity and introduces our promise of making healthcare easy to navigate via initiatives such as this new mobile app.”

To introduce Wellmark’s new mobile app, Campbell Mithun developed the below TV spot “Carded”, a radio spot, digital and mobile banners, and a slate of Facebook ads. “This work delivers Wellmark’s ‘Promises Matter’ message by sharing two very different but authentic experiences: one is a true health disaster; the other, a universal and practical situation,” said Reid Holmes, executive creative officer at Campbell Mithun. “Each resonates in a very different, yet impactful way to show what it looks like for a health insurance provider to keep its promises.”

“Daunting” Wellmark BlueCross BlueShield – Campbell Mithun

“Matt and Kendra” Wellmark BlueCross BlueShield – Campbell Mithun

“Carded” Wellmark BlueCross BlueShield – Campbell Mithun

<b>Blue Cross Blue Shield</b> of Michigan Medical and Dental Phasing out <b>...</b>

By Natasha Robinson, MPCA Program Specialist

The Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) is encouraging MIChild providers to work with health plans that will be expanding their MIChild networks and Medicaid plans that are becoming MIChild Health Plans as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) transitions its coverage out of MIChild. MIChild is the Children’s Health Insurance Program in Michigan designed to provide comprehensive health and dental insurance to children under age 19 for only $10 per month per family. The Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) is working to transition the MIChild enrollees currently in BCBSM to other MIChild Health Plans.

In a letter to providers, MDCH said the health plans will reach out to providers with contract details as they develop their coverage networks. Draft MIChild medical rates for October 1, 2013, are substantially higher than current Medicaid rates, MDCH said.

BCBSM will no longer be a plan option for MIChild beneficiaries. There are 38 counties in Michigan where BCBSM is the only MIChild plan option. In another 38 Michigan counties, BCBSM and only one other plan cover MIChild services. In all cases but one, these MIChild Health Plans are also currently contracted Medicaid Health Plans. This transition will begin in July for new and renewing MIChild enrollees. For current BCBSM MIChild enrollees, the transition will begin on October 1, 2013. The new model will streamline and coordinate administration and oversight of the MIChild and Medicaid government programs.

MDCH is also working to transition the current MIChild Dental members who have Blue Dental coverage with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to Delta Dental, effective October 1, 2013.

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