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Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City Announces CommunityBlue to Help Cover the Uninsured

Posted on: Monday, 14 November 2005, 15:00 CST

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, the Kansas City area healthcare community leader for more than 67 years, has announced a new product to help small businesses provide healthcare coverage to their employees: CommunityBlue will launch January 1, 2006.

"To our knowledge, CommunityBlue is the first health insurance program of its kind, both locally and nationally, which is exclusively designed for small companies who don't currently offer health insurance," said Tom Bowser, President and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. "Our company will be donating nearly $1 million a year in subsidies and waived administrative expenses for each 1,000 lives enrolled in CommunityBlue."

"The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce will join Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City in providing subsidies for eligible employees in the CommunityBlue program," said Pete Levi, President of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. "CommunityBlue will be offered as one of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City ChamberCHOICE products, which now serve more than 60,000 people in nearly 7,000 small groups throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area."

"The private healthcare system must stretch itself to reach the ever-growing population of uninsured if we are to hold any hope of long-term survival," said Tom Bowser. "For that reason, CommunityBlue is not designed to be a big money maker. Instead, it aims to find new ways to work with employers in providing low cost coverage. State and federal funding sources are already exhausted. As a society and as an industry, we need to find new ways to address this problem, and we hope CommunityBlue can be part of the solution."

Company officials said CommunityBlue uses a benefit design which is similar to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City's BlueSaver high deductible health plan and Health Savings Account product, with the option of a $1,500 or $5,000 deductible. The average cost of this product for an employee is approximately 30 percent less than traditional health insurance. To qualify, a business must have 99 or fewer employees, with 75 percent of them making an annual gross income less than $30,000, and 90 percent living within the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City-service area. In order to participate, an employee must be working at least 30 hours per week.

The CommunityBlue program provides subsidies to individuals who make less than $19,000 a year and families who make less than $30,000 a year. By using the consumer-driven benefit design, it encourages patient cost-sharing and efficient use of the health care system. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City is waiving half of its normal administrative fee for CommunityBlue and pledging all profits will be returned to the program.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City is contracting with the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation to provide several administrative services for the CommunityBlue product. For example, the Community Foundation will assist in certifying the income qualification for subsidies and serve as a foundation clearinghouse for contribution funds from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, the Chamber and, in time, other organizations. It will be involved in the disbursement of donated funds for eligible healthcare services on behalf of income-qualified individuals.

The CommunityBlue program also asks brokers and employers to do their part to make this program a success. Employers will be required to pay 50 percent of the premium for their employees. A targeted group of brokers has been selected to work on this program and will be accepting lower commission payments.

The CommunityBlue program utilizes one of the company's most popular physician and hospital networks, the Preferred-Care PPO network, which includes virtually all hospitals and physicians in the metropolitan area. "We're not asking doctors and hospitals to take a pay cut with the CommunityBlue program," said Bowser. "They already are subsidizing healthcare in this community every day, as they are unable to collect for a large percentage of the patients they treat. The Preferred-Care PPO program provides attractive reimbursement to doctors and hospitals, which has helped generate strong provider support for the CommunityBlue program," he said.

On August 30, 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau released new information indicating the number of uninsured increased from 45 million in 2003 to 45.8 million in 2004, which means 15.7 percent of Americans are uninsured. Although the unemployed represent a large number of those without health insurance, an even larger proportion is the working poor -- individuals who are employed, but make too little money to purchase private or employer-sponsored coverage, yet too much to qualify for Medicaid.

Sources show that almost one-half of the uninsured in the United States have difficulty affording health insurance because they earn less than $50,000 per year. Many of these people work for small firms that do not offer health coverage. As healthcare costs and premiums continue to increase, this problem is expected to intensify and to leave even more individuals without adequate healthcare coverage.

For more information on CommunityBlue, go to http://www.bcbskc.com/ . About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, the largest not-for-profit health insurer in the state and the only not-for-profit health insurer in Kansas City, has been part of the Kansas City community since 1938. BCBSKC provides health coverage to more than 880,000 residents in the greater Kansas City area and Northwest Missouri. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. For more information on the company, visit our Web site at http://www.bcbskc.com/ . Our mission statement: We will use our role as the leading health insurer to improve the health of the communities we serve.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City

CONTACT: Susan M. Johnson of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City,+1-816-395-3566, or susan.johnson@bcbskc.com

Web site: http://www.bcbskc.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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