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BC/BS and the premium had the lowest increase in a LONG time. It was 3.8%.
I have BC/BS- This just came across my email
As all of our employees know, fall is the renewal season for our employee health care coverage. Each year, we survey the market and solicit competitive proposals to make sure that the coverage we offer is comprehensive, providing the assurance that all of us will be protected against catastrophic expenses in conjunction with our current and future healthcare needs.
This year, the renewal process has been especially difficult because of our high level of plan usage, including an inordinate number of “high amount” claims. Our claim experience, in combination with the post – election certainty of “Obamacare” changes in 2014 and beyond, has made the insurance carriers unwilling to assume that our costs will return to normal, resulting in less competitive proposals for 2013. In fact, we considered and rejected the opportunity to move to one competing insurance carrier because we determined that the 1-2% savings available in 2013 were not worth the inconvenience and disruption a carrier change would have caused to our employees.
As a result, we were left to determine the best way to cope with a 2013 increase of almost +14% on a budget that was already over $45 million in total cost. We deemed this to be an unacceptable outcome and decided to make certain incremental plan design changes that would place greater responsibility on plan participants to be judicious in their use of prescription drug, office visit and non-emergency services and reduce our projected costs. None of the plan changes will impact coverage for serious or catastrophic illnesses.
You will soon receive our annual open enrollment newsletter, which covers all of the information that you will need to select the best coverage options for you and your family. Please review the information provided carefully, to be sure that you make the best possible choices.
FIL insurgeante (72 year old) just got his insurance bill. It went up. Ours went up in the fall. Where is all this savings that we are supposed to get?
Moving forward, the Congressional Budget Office does indeed expect insurance premiums to increase, by 5.7 percent annually. But the Affordable Care Act, again, doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with those increases. In a separate report, the CBO estimates that the health law will increase premiums in the individual market slightly more, due to those extra benefits. It says the impact on large employers is harder to predict, given all the flux in the insurance marketplace right now.
We pay more every year for less coverage. And, just found out our 24 year old daughter will be covered on our health insurance, but not dental. I think her sister was able to be covered until she was 26, but apparently dental plans aren't required to cover them to age 26 and now they have cut it back to 24.
I miss the 80s. Back then, I worked for a hospital and had great, inexpensive health and dental insurance. We had no copay for office visits and the insurance covered everything we had done; we never had to pay anything out of pocket. I think I paid $81/month for family coverage for health and dental.
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