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Managed Care Companies
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PREMERA HDHPs COVER 130 GENERICS BEFORE DEDUCTIBLE
Premera (Mountlake Terrace, WA) said it would offer HSA-compatible high-deductible health plan members first-dollar coverage of 130 generic drugs used to treat high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
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WESTERN HEALTH LAUNCHED HSA PLAN
Western Health Advantage (Sacramento, CA), a not-for-profit health plan, announced the introduction of an HSA-compatible high-deductible health plan.
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HORIZON BCBS-NJ HAS 12,000 CDHP LIVES
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey (Newark, NJ) has a total of about 12,000 consumer-directed health plan lives, the vast majority of whom are in HSA plans, according to Bill Marino, chief executive. Growth in CDHPs is slower than the company expected. CDHP “potentially could be a sea change, but it just takes a while to take hold,” he said.
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CIGNA EXPANDS SMALL GROUP HSAs TO CA, CT, NH, NJ, NY
Cigna Corp. (Philadelphia), which expects to double consumer-directed health plan lives to 600,000 in 2007 (HMN E-Mail Update, Jan. 8), has expanded its small group HSA plan offering to five more states: California, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York.
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BCBS-NC EXPECTS CDHP GAINS IN 2007
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (Durham, NC) has seen relatively slow uptake in its consumer-directed product line, but 2007 could mark an inflection point, according to according to Bob Greczyn, chief executive.
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EXCELLUS SEES LITTLE HSA PLAN UPTAKE
Excellus Inc. (Rochester, NY) has just a couple of thousand enrollees in HSA plans, according to chief executive David Klein, who noted that the benefits of high-deductible insurance products aren’t rich enough to win business in the heavily unionized New York state market. “We have a lot of first-dollar coverage,” Klein said.
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COMPLEXITY, COST TREND HOLD BACK HSAs, GELLERT SAYS
The complexity of HSA-compatible high-deductible health plans and other consumer-directed insurance products is among the key reasons why the plans aren’t catching on, said Jay Gellert, chief executive of Health Net (Woodland Hills, CA), which has more than 10,000 HSA plan lives.
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