Thousands Call About Insurance With Individual Health Care Policies Available Again, Insurers’ Phones Ringing Off The Hook

Washington insurers reported Monday brisk interest in their revived individual health care plans.

They said, however, it’s too early to tell how many inquiries will result in policy sales.

Premera Blue Cross and Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound opened enrollments Friday; Regence BlueShield, on Monday.

The three largest health insurers in the state withdrew their individual plans from most counties last year because, company officials said, they were losing millions of dollars on non-group coverage.

In response to their complaints, the Legislature passed a bill last spring extending the waiting period for people with pre-existing medical conditions and creating a separate insurance pool for those with high-risk conditions.

Premera and Group Health spokesmen said they have received more than 2,000 calls each from people statewide seeking information about their policies.

Premera’s Scott Forslund said the company had to double the number of representatives Monday to keep up with inquiries.

Information also is available at the firm’s Web site, www.premera.com, and from more than 800 insurance brokers around the state, he said.

“It’s really been a full-court press,” Forslund said.

But, he added, few applications have been returned to the company.

“It’s a little early,” he said.

Forslund said Premera offers plans in every county except Clark, where another carrier holds the market.

Greg Scully, director of sales and marketing for Group Health, said the cooperative will restrict individual coverage to the same 19 counties where it sells group plans.

Eight of those counties are in central or Eastern Washington, including Spokane, Whitman and Columbia.

Scully said consumers will have to shop carefully because few, if any, of the plans contain the same coverage.

Information on Group Health offerings is available at the cooperative’s Web site, www.gfc.org.

Regence will reintroduce individual plans in the 15 counties where they were offered prior to October 1999, spokesman Chris Bruzzo said.

Regence’s only counties east of the Cascades are Yakima and Walla Walla.

Bruzzo said Regence does not sell the preferred provider plans called for under the legislation and would have to build a network of providers to get into that business in the Spokane area.

“We’re going to be deliberate about expanding this type of coverage,” he said.

At the office of the state insurance commissioner, spokeswoman Barbara Stenson said the initial response to the return of individual health plans is encouraging.

But rural areas remain at a disadvantage, she said, noting that consumers will have fewer choices.

Group Health premiums are higher in Eastern Washington than in Western Washington, and they are higher still in Central Washington, Stenson said.

She also said the method for assigning applicants to the high-risk pool is unique in the United States.

Intended to capture only 8 percent of all individual insurance buyers, the screening application may shunt more away from standard plans, she said.

Although the high-risk premiums are 150 percent of those for the other plans, coverages are so rich for expenses such as drugs that many people will find the high-risk plans a good buy, Stenson said.

She said the carriers and the state will have a better handle on the market when the new plans take effect Jan. 1.

An extensive explanation of the individual market is posted on the insurance commissioner’s Web site at www.insurance.wa.gov.