When Jay had an MRI on his knee last month, we were charged $1200. The EOB tells us that the Vail Valley Medical Center in Vail, Colorado, charges $1600 for the procedure. Our Humana health insurance has a negotiated rate of $1200, which is what we paid (we hadn’t met the deductible yet, [...]

Some popular health insurance companies in Colorado are making the news with their healthy employee incentive programs.
A growing number of companies in Colorado and nationwide are offering free medical screenings, discounts or cash incentives to motivate employees to exercise more, eat better and quit smoking. They hope that a healthier work force will contain costs [...]

A study conducted by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) shows that Colorado ranks fifth in the nation for health savings account and high deductible health plan membership as a percentage of the state’s total private health insurance population [...]

According to a Business Week article, most of the major US health insurance carriers are moving towards including overseas hospitals in their provider networks, in an effort to encourage policy holders to utilize the much less expensive services that can be found in many of Asia’s top-notch private hospitals. Most of the hospitals are [...]

When Jay had an MRI on his knee last month, we were charged $1200. The EOB tells us that the Vail Valley Medical Center in Vail, Colorado, charges $1600 for the procedure. Our Humana health insurance has a negotiated rate of $1200, which is what we paid (we hadn’t met the deductible yet, [...]

United Healthcare has just made some big changes to their individual/family health insurance plans in Colorado. Some of the best improvements are:

More flexible underwriting, including a height and weight chart with expanded limits.
A first-day wellness benefit.
More deductible options

United Healthcare was already one of our favorites for underwriting on impaired risk cases. But with [...]

We got a bill last week for $397 from the company that provided Jay’s crutches, knee brace, and ice machine when he had knee surgery in January. The surgery was done at the Vail Valley Medical Center in Vail, Colorado, by Dr. Steadman; both the hospital and the doctor are on our Humana PPO [...]

Humana and Wellpoint - both major players in the Colorado health insurance market - lowered their 2008 earnings projections on Wall Street this week. In both cases, higher-than-expected claims volume is partially to blame. Humana’s earnings drop is mainly tied to claims with their Medicare prescription drug program, which the company says will [...]

Effective June 1, 2008, Boulder Valley Individual Practice Association (BVIPA) and the Longmont Clinic will no longer participate in the Kaiser Permanente Private Healthcare Systems (PHCS) provider network. PHCS is the provider network available to Kaiser Permanente Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) and Point of Service (POS) members in Colorado. Kaiser says [...]

Effective immediately, Longmont United Hospital will no longer be participating in Kaiser Permanente’s Colorado provider network for Preferred Provider Organization(PPO) and Point of Service (POS) benefit plans in the Private Healthcare Systems (PHCS) health insurance network. [Longmont United Hospital still works with the PHCS network - just not through Kaiser] Kaiser is very disappointed by [...]