Have you recently received a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona with your new rates and policy option choices? They have just begun sending letters to all of their policyholders, so if you have not yet received your letter, look for it to arrive soon.

If you are currently on the BluePreferred PPO plan, you may find it to be less expensive if you change your plan to the new BlueOptimum Plus PPO plan. If you choose to make this change, you will not have to go through medical underwriting again. If you now have the grandfathered Blue Preferred plan, you may switch to the Blue Optimum Plus plan by simply checking a box on the form that is included in Blue Cross’s letter and returning that form to them. In the majority of cases, your monthly premium cost will probably go down. For example, A 50 year old man living in Phoenix would pay $539 per month to stay on the BluePreferred $1,000 deductible plan. By simply telling Blue Cross that you wish to switch to the new BlueOptimum Plus plan, your rate would actually go down to $405. A 30 year old woman living in Tucson would pay $270 per month for her existing BluePreferred $1,000 deductible plan, but if she moved over to the new BlueOptimum Plus plan, her monthly cost would go down to $228.

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If you do not have a health insurance policy because you are between jobs, there is an affordable option available that you may not be aware of — a temporary (or short term) health insurance policy.

Here in Arizona, United HealthCare, Assurant and IHC (a company endorsed by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona) offer temporary plans, as do some other smaller companies. You can pay for the plan on a monthly basis, and you can keep the plan for up to six months (up to 12 months at some companies). The rates are quite a bit lower than the rates for full term health insurance policies, and there is no medical underwriting, so if you need a plan to go into effect right away, you could buy one today and have it go into effect at midnight tonight.

The reason there is no medical underwriting is because the short term plans do not pay anything for any pre-existing conditions. The insurance company doesn’t really care that you have irritable bowel syndrome because they won’t pay anything for it. In their application, most of the short term policy companies ask just one basic health question, and the question goes something like, “in the past five years, have you been treated for heart attack, cancer, stroke, diabetes, AIDS or are you pregnant?” If you say no, they will give you a policy.

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As of October 1st, 2010, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona will no longer offer HMO plans to individual and family customers in Arizona. (HMO options will still be available on group employer plans.)

The Blue Cross HMO plan, called BlueSelect, had gotten so expensive that very few people were buying it anyway. However, it was one of only a few options for maternity coverage available to individuals in Arizona. Golden Rule and Assurant recently stopped offering maternity plans here as well.

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If you have a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona health insurance policy, you may or may not be affected by the changes mandated by Obamacare. If your policy became effective before March 23, 2010, your plan is considered a “grandfathered” plan. This means that while there may be some minor changes made to your policy by Blue Cross to comply with the law, for the most part you won’t see many changes. Grandfathered plans don’t need to comply with some of the new law’s provisions, and that MAY be either good or bad for you. But here is what will definitely change about your policy:

1. Annual and lifetime limits will be removed. If your Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona health insurance policy has a lifetime limit of $5,000,000, this will be removed. If you get sick and spend 10 years in the hospital and your bills are twenty million dollars, Blue Cross will pay those bills.

2. Pre-existing condition limitations for your children will be removed. If your child is on your Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona health insurance policy and Blue Cross said, when they offered the policy to you, that they would not cover your child’s pre-existing condition, such as asthma, that condition will now be covered.

Your policy will no longer be considered grandfathered, however, if you or Blue Cross make changes to your policy that:

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You have two different choices for a Medicare supplemental health insurance plan, and you only need to select one.

One is called a Medicare Advantage plan. This is the plan you often see advertised with the selling point “little or no monthly cost to you.” The Advantage plans are like HMO plans: usually you must visit doctors and hospitals that accept the plan.

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Aetna has recently announced changes to their small business health insurance plans in Arizona.

Many of the changes they are making are necessary in order to comply with health care reform. They are also trying to manage rising health care expenses, reduce administrative costs, and simplify their plans.

Effective October 1, 2010, the following changes will go into effect for Aetna small business health plans:

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If you are the owner of a small business located in Arizona, you are probably eligible to enroll your employees in a small business group health insurance plan.

But is that the smartest and best option for you and your employees? Maybe yes and maybe no. You may not be aware, but in many cases, small business health insurance plans cost considerably more than individual health insurance plans.

If you provide health insurance to your employees, you are required to pay at least 50% of your employees’ premium. If you have eight employees insured on a small business group health plan, perhaps the premium for each employee is $300. That comes to a total monthly premium for your employees of $2400 each month. You are required to pay at least $1200 of that amount. Can you afford to do this?

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University and state employees in Arizona recently received notification that their health insurance premiums are going up next year as much as 37%.

Are you one of those employees?

If so, you can find more affordable health insurance for your spouse and/or children by purchasing an individual or family plan. You are not required to keep your family on the state plan, and switching them to an individual or family plan can save you a lot of money.

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Curious about health insurance for your business in Arizona? Here are seven facts about group health insurance to help get you started. If you’d like more information or would like to see a quote for your group, please don’t hesitate to fill out our group quote form, or call us at (800) 600-9663.

Seven Small Business Health Insurance Facts

1. If you have two or more employees (yourself included), you cannot be turned down for a group health insurance plan, as long as you meet certain eligibility requirements. Whether or not there are major health conditions, your group will be accepted for coverage.

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When you are trying to buy a health insurance policy, you’ll obviously need to know what the various plan benefits will provide you and what the premium cost will be. How would you find out what those monthly premium costs and policy benefits are?

You could go to the Yellow Pages and start calling the health insurance agents near you, but you probably won’t do that. You’re an “Internet person” — that’s why you’re reading this blog post right now. So instead of finding your copy of the Yellow Pages, you’ll most likely go to Google or Yahoo or some other search engine and do a search for something like “tucson arizona health insurance,” if you live in Tucson. Then you will be presented with, as of this writing, about 14,000,000 results.

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