Blue Cross Health Insurance
Blue Cross Health Insurance was developed by a university professor in Dallas, Texas, way back in 1929. He was putting together a health care program for college professors that would pay their hospital expenses in the event of illness. Back in the good old days, the cost of the policy for an entire year was-drum roll here-six dollars!
About a decade later, a doctor and a labor leader developed a health care plan to provide medical care for injured workers, and it was the beginning of Blue Shield. Over the years, employers began issuing health insurance policies with two components, both of which were almost completely paid by the employer.
The first component was Blue Cross family insurance, which paid the costs charged by hospitals, whether they were due to hospitalization or for outpatient expenses. The second component was Blue Shield, which covered most of the costs of seeing a doctor. In the Eighties, Blue Cross and Blue Shield joined ranks to become the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA).
One of the biggest changes that affected the future trends of health care costs was enacted by President Ronald Reagan in his Tax Reform Act of 1986. His Act stated that health insurance companies such as Blue Cross Health Insurance were no longer entitled to specific tax exemptions because they were no longer operating as nonprofit organizations.
In the years ahead, as the government bumbled its way into health care reform by infusing Medicare plans with diagnosis-related group (DRG) payment schedules and capitation plans, Blue Cross and Blue Shield jumped on the bandwagon with capitation plans of its own. Capitation plans guaranteed physicians who signed up a guaranteed payment for each patient who was in the Blue Cross network, whether the patient sought many services or zero services.
Nevertheless, Blue Cross and Blue Shield have always set the standards for family insurance plans. And the company has come up with many innovative ways to save money, both for itself and for its insured members.
Just as with most family insurance companies, Blue Cross Health Insurance
offers several basic choices-high premium plans that pay most of your expenses, or low premium plans that leave you with gaps in your coverage. You’re unlikely to find better coverage for your family insurance dollars with any other company. And there’s really not much that’s different or new in the way of policies, either. Your choices remain:
• PPO plans-preferred provider networks that let you go to any provider as long as you stay within the wide Blue Cross Blue Shield network.
• POS plans-managed care types of plans that set you up with a primary care physician (PCP) who must approve every step of your health care needs.
• Indemnity coverage plans-the old-fashioned type plans that don’t limit anything. You can go to whomever or wherever you like. Your costs are a little higher for these.
• HSA plans-savings accounts with tax benefits that are set up to work with high-deductible PPO plans.
The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association continues to be a leader in family insurance. There are many variations of each type of plan, because Blue Cross Health Insurance responds when a group employer requests specific areas of coverage. And Blue Cross Health Insurance tracks customer satisfaction levels, patient safety ratings, clinical quality measurements, utilization review, and all kinds of logistic and demographic statistics that can make a difference in your health care dollars.
