I have a Blue Cross PPO Share 2500 individual plan and just got my premium invoice for May 1st. My premium increases by 17.3%, on top of a 19% increase last fall. That means my premium, which was $526 per month last October (prior to the fall increase), will now be $736. In October of 2008, my premium was only $441. In addition, only four months into this year, my annual deductible is increasing from $2500 to $2950, my annual maximum is increasing from $7,500 to $8,850 and all of the other copays are going up substantially as well.
I called Blue Cross and asked about why my premiums and copays were increasing when all the news reports said that the Blue Cross increases had been rolled back. The person on the line said that the rollback did not apply to my plan, because it’s regulated by the Department of Managed Health Care, not the Department of Insurance. Blue Cross also told me that my only option for lower premiums was to accept a plan with an even higher deductible and out of pocket costs; their suggestion – try the $5,000 or $7,500 deductible plan.
How can this be? How can some Blue Cross PPO subscribers get a break, and I won’t? How can it be possible for Blue Cross to implement mid-year copay and deductible increases? I already hit my annual out of pocket maximum due to surgery in January (my first and only major claim to Blue Cross in over 10 years of coverage) and now all of a sudden I have to pay upwards of another $1350 out of pocket, plus even more in prescription drug costs! And they can do this to DMHC enrollees but are not doing it to DOI subscribers?
This seems unfair and highly discriminatory. I am just one individual. I don’t have the bargaining power of a group, or the protection of coverage under Medi-Cal or Medicare. If the laws of this State allow Blue Cross to do this to me and other individual enrollees, and do it again and again, isn’t it up to our lawmakers and the governor to fix it?
