Health insurer to reduce 2021 premiums
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas also issuing credits as pandemic relief for group plans
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas said Tuesday that it will lower health insurance premiums next year and issue credits to employers who purchase group plans as the coronavirus pandemic reduces visits to providers and medical spending.
The insurance company said the decreases to individual and group health insurance rates for next year will save plan holders $109 million. The company said it would issue $104 million in rebates in the form of credits to fully insured Texas employers.
Insurers nationwide are paying out fewer claims and several are offering pandemic relief credits in response to COVID-19. The Centers for Medicare and Medic aid released guidelines over the summer allowing insurers to return some of those premiums back to people and businesses enrolled in their plans.
Health care spending has dropped dramatically during the pandemic, as patients avoided physician offices and medical providers were forced to reschedule elective procedures. There’s still a lot of “uncertainty” about whether spending will bounce back later this year, said James Campbell, a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas spokesperson.
“This is about the ‘now’ and giving relief to our fully insured
Texas employer customers and providing further financial relief for group plans, individuals and their families,” Campbell said.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas is the largest insurer in the state, serving 6 million plan holders and working with more than 80,000 medical providers. It is unclear howmany consumers will benefit from the pandemic relief credits.
An analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health policy think tank, found that insurers have remained profitable during the pandemic. A provision in the Affordable Care Act, however, caps the profits insurance companies can make, and requires them to return amounts above the cap to consumers.
Recently, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas issued $250 million in rebates to individuals and small groups that had Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas plans in 2019. The year prior, it returned almost $75 million in refunds to about 313,000 Texans who bought plans on the individual market in 2018.
Its parent company, Health Care Service Corp., posted a $2.6 billion profit in the first half of 2020, a14.5 percent jump over the same period a year prior, accord-ing to Modern Healthcare, a trade publication.
Last year, health insurers refunded nearly $92 million to hundreds of thousands of Texas consumers under that provision in the Affordable Care Act.