Health Insurance Companies Make Coverage Easier to Understand

Health insurance companies are now responsible for ensuring their customers are able to understand the basics of their coverage as determined by final rules issued by the White House. Coverage details will take the form of simplified summaries of benefits and coverage, along with a glossary of terms.

Consumers will receive the forms when they apply for a new plan or have their coverage renewed. Arriving in an eight-page document, the forms will outline the following:

• Co-payments for drugs, doctor and hospital care
• Deductibles for limits on coverage
• What services the plan does and does not cover

U.S.

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The Obama administration has ordered health insurance company, Trustmark,  to rescind its recent request for a health insurance rates increase after deeming it unreasonable.

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The U.S. remains on track to spend twice as much for health care as for food, yet millions are without insurance or uninsured. “Health insurance premiums also continue to rise on average another 9 percent in 2011,” says Merton Bernstein, JD, leading health insurance expert and the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. “Medical care costs can change direction if policy makers stop whistling past a significant contributor non-benefit costs.” Bernstein details the numerous stages of the process for billing medical care services and the processing of these bills by insurers in his current Health Affairs piece, “Pay Attention to Health Insurance Non-Benefit Costs.” He estimates, using Best’s Insurance data, that about one billion non-Medicare billings are processed yearly. Full post…

Workers may have to seek outside health insurance after the health overhaul takes effect in 2014, says a new report released by McKinsey & Co. They found 30 percent of employers are likely to stop offering workers coverage because of the rules associated with reform.

Companies to Back Out Due to Lack of Provision Waiver

The study found that a growing number of employers are seeking waivers from an early provision in the health overhaul that requires them to enrich their benefits for workers this year. The law mandates that employers not cap annual benefit payouts below $750,000 per person, per year.

In order to sidestep the provision, employers have been receiving waivers in droves.

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In Switzerland, health insurance, which is backed by the state, will now cover five types of complementary medicine until 2017 after the government issued a new ruling. There will however be an independent investigation of whether or not they work.

In 2009 there was a referendum in the country and 67 per cent of the electorate balloted in favour for complementary medicine to be covered by health insurance . The five therapies to be offered are homeopathy, herbal and traditional Chinese treatments, anthroposophic medicine, which among other techniques uses mistletoe to treat cancer and neural therapy, which is based on injecting local anaesthetics near nerve centres.

However in December, according to a scientific panel, acting on behalf of the Swiss government, the methods used did not meet objective measures of efficiency. Full post…

Bupa has announced that it is to launch cash plan fundamentals, a cash plan for businesses which starts from 1 per employee, per week.

The health insurance plan will provide three levels of cover, giving employers the option to cover different employees at different levels within their organisation. Employees can claim back up to 2,295 a year towards the cost of their everyday healthcare expenses.

The new cash plan offers up to 200 a year for optical care, 200 a year for dental treatment and up to 400 a year for consultations, scans and diagnostic tests for employees. Also available is upto 45 a year for prescriptions and 300 a year for medical appliances, such as the use of a wheelchair . Full post…