Brief:

More employers are starting to offer their employees Health Savings Accounts as an option for their health care coverage. Since the HSA’s can only be obtained with High Deductible Heatlh Plans premiums are much lower. Employers can then take a portion of the premium savings and add it to the employee’s Health Savings Account.

If the Employee incurs any qualified medical they can pay for them out of the Health Savings Account. If the money is not used it is rolled over and accrues interest on a tax deferred basis.

Consumer driven health insurance plans like HSA’s aim to transfer cost-managing responsibility to the health care consumers themselves.

Many of Florida’s (and the rest of the the U.S.) best health insurance companies offer HSA’s - Health Savings Accounts to both groups and individuals. Humana, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Golden Rule, Time, Assurant Health, United Healthcare, just to name a few.

You can read the full article here.

Brief:

This is another example of how Health Savings Acounts - HSA’s can drastically lower the cost of health care coverage.

The article also offers helpful tips on how to encourage employees to participate.

You can read the full article here.

Brief:

Humana and Blue Cross Blue Shield are getting together to form what they call a “payer-based health record”. This database is going to be populated with all their claims information and is designed to:

• Help improve patient safety
• Eliminate duplicate medical procedures
• Reduce unnecessary services
• Reduce Fraud

Healthcare professionals will be able to view a statement containing all the patient’s health care services from the various doctors, other medical providers, and other health plans.

The record itself is going to contain:

• Transactional information from the health plans claims record
• Dates of service
• Name of health care provider
• Name of prescription

The record is NOT going to contain results and diagnosis for:

• Psychiatric treatment
• Substance abuse
• HIV related treatments

The information will be held in the patient’s respective health plan and ONLY providers have access to the consolidated medical records.

You can read the complete article
here.

Brief:

This is one of those articles that you need to read!

Nine ways to lower health insurance premiums.

1. Shop Around for Health Insurance- even in good years
2. Consider Health Savings Accounts
3. Find a broker (like me) who works FOR YOU
4. Tweak the finer points of your health insurance plan - consider higher deductibles
5. Careful who you are covering
6. Be your own insurer - get a high deductible plan
7. Jump in the pool
8. Outsource it
9. GET HEALTHY

You can read the full article here.

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ — HealthLeaders-InterStudy, a leading provider of managed care industry intelligence, finds that despite a slip in HMO enrollment, new HMOs continue to enter the Florida market. (more…)

Brief:

Health insurance premiums are rising steadily, and as they do more employers are finding the increased cost prohibited. This article uses the PGA as an example.

Their dilemma was how to provide the caddies with health insurance. Adding them to the group plan would have created an administrative nightmare, and would cost and estimated $1.4 million a year.

The solution was to give each caddy a predetermined amount of cash and let them buy their health care coverage from a health insurance company offering individual health insurance policies.

Pros:

• Individual health insurance costs less than group sponsored health insurance. On average individual health insurance costs is about half the price of an emloyer sponsored group plan.

Con:

• Individual health insurance companies can medically underwrite. This means that they can decline people in poor health. Employees with pre-existing conditions may be unable to get health insurance.

  You can read the full article here.

Brief:

This is a rather lengthy (and kind of boring) article on the effects state regulations have on health insurance premiums.

Fact is that increased legislation results in increased health insurance premiums.

States that require health insurance to be guaranteed issue have health insurance premiums that are twice as much as those states that don’t. This means that healthy people are subsidizing the unhealthy people.

See for yourself this link will take you to the New York Department of Insurance website.

Get Healthy and Stay Healthy if you want lower health insurance premiums.

You can read the full article here.

Brief:

The cost of health care is rising out of control causing insurance premiums to increase accordingly. A big part of it is Administrative Waste. According to a Harvard study medical billing costs about $400 billion per year.

Here are some of the Billing Abuses:

1. A specialist that charges $250 to stop by your hospital room to see how you are feeling. Their medical biller sends that claim to your insurance company.
2. Routine duplication of medical procedures. There is no central electronic patient treatment record.
3. Documentation requirements for reporting claims to the insurance company.

You can read the full article here.

According to the government accountability office the number of people opting for high deductible health plans increased from 3 million in January 2005 to more than 6 million in January 2006.

High deductible medical insurance plans offer significantly lower healthcare premiums and when coupled with a Health Savings Account offer the consumer additional tax deductions. The increased popularity of Health Savings Accounts can be attributed the rising cost of healthcare coverage.

The trick to finding the best health insurance policy is to find the balance between your risk exposure and your monthly premium. Don’t be afraid of a high deductible medical insurance plan. If you want cheap health insurance, health savings accounts are the way to go.

This is especially true if you are looking for medical insurance in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, or West Palm Beach, where medical insurance premiums tend to higher than the rest of Florida.

You can read the full BusinessWeek article here: GAO: High-deductible insurance on rise

Tampa, Florida - Dec 13, 2005 - Green Ribbon Health LLC, in conjunction with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), today officially launched a three-year Medicare Health Support pilot program in West Central and Southwest Florida. Green Ribbon Health is a new Florida-based company formed by Humana Inc. and Pfizer Health Solutions Inc to provide Medicare Health Support services to beneficiaries invited by Medicare to participate. Support services will be provided initially in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee, Hardee, DeSoto, Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties. Following the three-year pilot period, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has discretion to expand the program if successful. (more…)