This story is covered by the Chatanoogan. Gale Arden’s role as Vice President and General Manage of the Senior Care division at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee will be to oversee their Medicare products, including Medicare Advantage, Stand Alone Medicare Part D products and Medicare Supplement products.
BCBS of TN is in…

This is an interesting development and may be a case of “Back to the Future” for Humana.  Some may recall that Humana started out as an aggregator of Hospital systems before it divested it’s Medical services operation to focus on Health Insurance.  The acquisition of Concentra is not an insignificant investment ($790 million) relative to…

If you still need last minute training, look no further. Here is a list of the upcoming Insurance Trainings.  Registration is “one click” away at Ritter Insurance’s “Event’s Calendar”! (You must be logged in to register!) Monday, November 29th;  No scheduled training. Tuesday, November 30th;  Coventry GHP-CCP New Agent Training via the web is open to…

Recently, CMS loosened (somewhat) the guidelines for those with End Stage Renal Disease to change plans within their parent organization.  Previously, Beneficiaries with ESRD were only able to stay within the same plan type (H-number), such as HMO, PPO, PFFS. CMS has now allowed Beneficiaries with ESRD to switch to different plans within the same…

Here is an interesting story from NPR.  Talks about how Baby Boomers are perceiving the Medicare.gov website and the Medicare Prescription Drug benefit.  The story implies that it may be wise to seek out professional help, but doesn’t give any resources for Medicare Beneficiaries to find an agent. You can click on the link…

The Department of Health and Human Services released the final rules regarding Minimum Medical Loss Ratios (MLR) yesterday.  The rules were perceived by the industry as “manageable”.  In addition, states have the ability to request waivers if they impact of the Minimum MLR would cause insurers to exit the market. Insurance stocks rose following the…

I was recently interviewed for an article by Health Plan Week regarding the impact of legislation on the 2011 Medicare Advantage plans.  I was quoted in a couple of places in the article.  Here is a link to the newsletter.

Craig Ritter will be hosting a special webex presentation for agents who are impacted by CMS’ announcement on Friday that Health Net, Arcadian and Universal American will be placed on Marketing Sanctions. The call will take place at 3pm EASTERN TIME (Noon PACIFIC TIME) on Tuesday, November 23rd.  We apologize for the short notice, however,…

Clarification of the MLR regulations is expected to be announced this morning, according to The Hill Healthwatch.    Since the NAIC recommendations were made to Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius, industry experts opinions have been all over the map about the effect of this key reform regulation.  While discussing the upcoming announcement with our…

Update:  We’ve added an emergency webex call for agent on Tuesday, November 23rd at 3pm EASTERN time.  Click here for details and to register. CMS isssued a press release on Friday afternoon announcing these marketing sanctions.  The sanctions for Health Net took effect at mid-night last Friday, so as I write this, they are…