Cover Florida partners with United Healthcare, Blue Cross, others - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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But constraints about the scope of the coverage have some underwriters concerned that potential opportunities providede by the new products will be mitigated if they are hard to The plans are beintg offered as part of the Cover Floridaw Health CareAccess Program, an initiative approved by the Legislaturw this year to provide low unsubsidized insurance for individuals through private insurers. Gov.
Charlie Crist has said the plans could extenxd coverage to nearly 4 milliobn individuals ages 19 to 64 who currently are Cover Florida got a jumpstart this month when regulatorszchose , one of the businesses of (NYSE: and Jacksonville-based to provide statewide Four regional plans were chosen to provide coveragr in northeast and southeast Florida: Totaol Health Choice and JMH Health Plan, each with administrativ e offices in Miami; Medica Health Plan of Florida in Coral and Florida Health Plan in Holly Three other plans, including Universap Health Care of St. Petersburg, submittedf bids but were disqualified becauss they failed to meetmandatorty criteria.
The Agency for , which is working with the to set up and monitofthe program, asked companies submittingg bids to price their productes at $150 a month on the high end, said Davic Lewis, UnitedHealthcare’s CEO for central and nortu Florida. That’s less than half the cost of premiumsx fortraditional products, he said. All the carriers will offefr consumers at leasttwo plans, one with catastrophixc and hospital coverage, and one without such coverage. The cost of coveragw will vary, depending on the plan and the age and sex of the There willbe caps, or uppert limits, on coverage in order to keep premiumx affordable, Lewis said.
For instance, a benefits grid from AHCA showd UnitedHealthcare’s catastrophic plan would cover 10 days a year for a hospital stay and emergenc room care benefits would not be provideds for the treatment of illnesses typicall treated ina doctor’s “These products won’t be the types of products that people would normally see in an employer-sponsorer plan because of the economics,” Lewis The caps could dampen the enthusiasm of some agents about the new said Heidi Bushko, presidentg of in Safety Harbor and presidenrt of the .
She said it’s incumbent on agents to do a good job explainingy the plans toprospective buyers, because one hospitak stay could exhaust the caps. “If I knew that someonew will need more care than what this plan will I couldn’t consciously sell this plan,” Bushkpo said. But Maitland-based UnitedHealthcare, which will distributes the Cover Florida products throughindependent doesn’t expect all of the 5,000 agenta it relies on statewide to have an interest in the Lewis said. “I will imagine most volume will come from agenciesw that specifically decide they have a niche in this markeyt and decide to pursueit aggressively,” he said.
UnitedHealthcar e does not expect to add staff at its Tampa officer because of theadditional products, Lewias said.