{"id":10726,"date":"2009-12-16T16:50:30","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T16:50:30","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-12-16T21:36:54","modified_gmt":"2009-12-16T21:36:54","slug":"blue-shield-deposits-lumps-of-coal-in-stockings-across-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/12\/16\/blue-shield-deposits-lumps-of-coal-in-stockings-across-california\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Shield Deposits Lumps of Coal in Stockings Across California"},"content":{"rendered":"

While some sort of Frankensteinien healthcare consensus seems to be forming in DC, Blue Shield is thumbing their nose at a consumer-focused healthcare system.  With Blue Shield, profits<\/strike> the balance sheet<\/i> comes first, as they have announced that they will remove a late payment grace period. From David Lazarus<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Amid a national debate on how to make the healthcare system friendlier and more accessible, and as millions of people grapple with the loss of jobs and homes, what does insurance heavyweight Blue Shield of California do?<\/p>\n

It decides to take a key benefit away.<\/p>\n

The company has notified individual policyholders that their coverage could be immediately dropped if they miss a single payment — or so it seems. Blue Shield says in a letter to customers that they can reapply for insurance, but with potentially higher premiums and stricter conditions. This represents a significant change from Blue Shield’s former practice of giving customers two special grace periods annually to make up for missed payments without any change to coverage or premiums.(LA Times<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While employer (and individual) healthcare costs are going up rapidly<\/a>, and benefits are decreasing, Blue Shield is doing its best to make sure that its customers are even more upset with the system.  <\/p>\n

Sure, they don’t have to offer this grace period, but is now the time to start making health insurance less consumer friendly?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While some sort of Frankensteinien healthcare consensus seems to be forming in DC, Blue Shield is thumbing their nose at a consumer-focused healthcare system.  With Blue Shield, profits<\/strike> the balance sheet<\/i> comes first, as they have announced that they will remove a late payment grace period. From David Lazarus<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Amid a national debate on how to make the healthcare system friendlier and more accessible, and as millions of people grapple with the loss of jobs and homes, what does insurance heavyweight Blue Shield of California do?<\/p>\n

It decides to take a key benefit away.<\/p>\n

The company has notified individual policyholders that their coverage could be immediately dropped if they miss a single payment — or so it seems. Blue Shield says in a letter to customers that they can reapply for insurance, but with potentially higher premiums and stricter conditions. This represents a significant change from Blue Shield’s former practice of giving customers two special grace periods annually to make up for missed payments without any change to coverage or premiums.(LA Times<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While employer (and individual) healthcare costs are going up rapidly<\/a>, and benefits are decreasing, Blue Shield is doing its best to make sure that its customers are even more upset with the system.  <\/p>\n

Sure, they don’t have to offer this grace period, but is now the time to start making health insurance less consumer friendly?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-22"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2N0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}