Blue Cross Health Insurance-Coverage Considerations

There are several different types of health care insurance plans available. Some of which include HMO (Health Maintenance Organizations), and PPO (Preferred Provider Organizations). Blue Cross Health Insurance, and Blue Shield are the traditional type health insurance offered by mutual and stock companies.

Commercial insurance companies generally provide broad healthcare coverage, and are not really cost effective, or extremely efficient when delivering health care to patients.

However, Blue Cross Health Insurance differs in several ways when compared to other types of commercial insurance companies. One major difference is that many of their benefits are provided not on the basis of reimbursement, but rather on the basis of service. What does this mean? Rather then you paying the service provider and then being reimbursed by the company, Blue Cross Health Insurance pays the service provider directly for your treatment and services.

Blue Cross also establishes and maintains contractual relationships with doctors and hospitals. What this means is that in order for doctors and hospitals to participate with the Blue Cross Health Insurance plan, they must enter into a contract with the company. This contract defines the costs for the specific services provided to patients.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield are familiar names to most people. However, most do not understand that they are two very different types of health insurance. For all covered hospital services, Blue Cross Health Insurance is the plan to choose. For all covered physician services, it is Blue Shield. Blue Cross contracts with hospitals, Blue Shield contracts with physicians.

Blue Cross Health Insurance and Blue Shield are pre-paid health insurance plans. How this works is that you are required to pay a monthly premium to the insurance company in order to be covered for your medical services.

As a subscriber of Blue Cross Health Insurance, the hospital will be paid for each medical service claim provided. Generally, covered services would include pre-admission tests, chemotherapy, dialysis, physical therapy, diagnostic tests, emergencies, injuries, and minor surgeries. Specialized coverage for subscribers may be provided for families with dependent handicapped children. Additional coverage to include maternity benefits will also be available to subscribers.

Blue Cross may also offer supplemental coverage for catastrophic loss under the plan. Blue Shield, will handle coverage with your physicians. A Blue Shield participating physician will be paid directly as contracted and agreed upon. The amount paid, is pre-determined and is generally set on a basis of UCR (Usual, Customary, and Reasonable) rates as well as comparable rates being paid to physicians in the same area. Together, Blue Cross Health Insurance and Blue Shield are a consolidated company, and should be considered when looking for quality health insurance coverage.

Copyright ©2006 Carl DiNello

Carl DiNello is an Article Author whose articles are featured on websites covering the Internet's most popular topics.

To read more on this topic, please visit Health Insurance Information!

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Blue Cross Health Insurance - A Popular Choice

The Blue Cross Blue Shield trade organization provides some of the most popular medical insurance available. Through this trade organization, Blue Cross Health Insurance, links to nearly 40 independent, regional health insurance companies located in the United States. and Puerto Rico. Todays Blue Cross health insurance company, along with the Blue Shield company, both evolved from individual health insurance companies originally formed during the 1930s.

A Blue Cross sponsored health insurance company essentially becomes a franchisee of the parent company. Each franchise is authorized to offer Blue Cross health insurance plans and/or Blue Shield plans. These plans are so popular that there are Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance plans available in every U.S. state. In fact, in many states, and regions, a Blue Cross health insurance company often acts as the Medicare administrator for that area.

Looking under the Blue Cross health insurance umbrella you will currently find 39 member companies. Having provided health insurance for more than 70 years, it is estimated that 1 in 3 Americans carries some type of Blue Cross health insurance card. The Blue Cross health insurance company proudly promotes its health insurance plans as being of high quality, flexible, and affordable.

Blue Cross health insurance is also available to the Federal Government. This Federal health insurance plan presents a nation-wide option offered by the FEHBP (Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan). The FEHBP was established strictly for the purpose of offering Blue Cross health insurance to federal employees. This allows the Blue Cross health insurance companies to maintain a close association with governmental health insurance policy makers.

Traditionally, Blue Cross health insurance provided coverage for only hospital related expenses. Medical coverages (doctors, etc.) were offered by Blue Shield. With just a few exceptions, that division of offerings no longer exists. Blue Cross health insurance is obtainable from brokers of either Blue Cross, or Blue Shield.

There has been some consolidation of Blue Cross health insurance companies allowing them to provide health insurance coverage to very large groups, while at the same time being able to offer lower premium rates. One such consolidation is called WellPoint. It offers both Blue Cross, and Blue Shield health insurance in more than a dozen states. Other examples would be the mid-Atlantic region's CareFirst, and located in the U.S. Pacific northwest, The Regence Group.

Financially speaking, just how popular is Blue Cross health insurance? It is estimated that in 2003, the Blue Cross health insurance family of companies earned more than $182 billion in revenues.

For anyone who may be seeking affordable health insurance offering good coverage, a Blue Cross health insurance plan may just meet your coverage needs, while still fitting into your budget.

Carl DiNello is an Article Author whose articles are featured on websites covering the Internet's most popular topics.

To read more on this topic, please visit Health Insurance Information!

You may republish this article on your website, or e-zine so long as none of the content, or author information has been edited or changed in any way, and all links are left active and unchanged.

PHRs Model by Blue Cross Insurance

High quality health care today simply means having the right information in the right hands and at the right time. You may be an individual or a family, every body need concurrent access to health care information that might be discrete among a number of physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, and other health care providers. But in fact we are many years away from the system that are fully interoperable. Consumers would have superior access to the health care information they require to optimize their health and health care thanks to a new personal health record (PHR) model being urbanized by Blue cross health insurance plans.

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) worked jointly to recognize the core health care information to comprise in PHRs, and have urbanized and pilot tested standards, which allow consumers to move PHR data when they actually change their coverage. This ensures that PHRs would surely be portable from health insurer to health insurer as customers have requested. Members of the two teams cover about 200 million people.

The industry model PHR by Blue cross insurance is in fact private, secure web-based tool preserved by an insurer, which contains a consumer's claims and organizational information. PHRs allow individual patients and their chosen caregivers to look and manage health care information and play a better role in their own health care.

Consequently of health insurance claims filed on behalf of consumers, insurers have most information required to give PHRs, and are in an exclusive position to build them for customers in the near term. PHRs are different from the electronic health records, which providers normally use to store and run detailed clinical information. A projected 75 million people have PHRs throughout health insurers, with millions more planned for the service during 2007.

Physicians tend to encourage insurers to accept a reliable set of core PHR data. Health insurers would carry on innovating in the PHRs they expand, but the aim is to slot in core data elements into every PHR. These elements comprise patient histories, medications, immunizations, allergies, risks, plans of care, and much other information, which physicians recognized as the key data. The health insurance groups of people have set an objective of incorporating the core data elements and implement the standards for portability from a previous insurer to a new insurer by 2008.

Tamil Selvi is a SEO Copywriter of Blue Cross Health Insurance. She written many articles in various topics.For more information visit: Blue Cross Blue Shield Insurance. contact her at tamil@searchenginegenie.com

 

How The Blue Cross Works

The Blue Cross is, in actuality, not a single company, but is instead a large conglomeration of companies that make up the Blue Cross Group of companies. These businesses that make up the Blue Cross include the leading companies with the highest financial stability in providing several medical services, such as travel insurance, personal accident insurance, and medical insurance, as well as Third Party Administered Plans for healthcare services, and many more similar products.

The grouping of companies under the Blue Cross has a solid experience of over fifty years. They pride themselves on their ability to maintain a steady level of excellence, while still giving all of their many clients comprehensive and practical services.

The commitment of Blue Cross, according to their own website, is to continually improve their own customer service, to ensure that the services that they provide their customers are always getting better. With the track record worthy of boasting, and a competent support staff, they feel confident that they are always equipped to provide customers will immediate service at high levels at any given time.

This level of service is especially important in the health industry. Certainly, we all expect good customer service from any company with which we do business, but with the utter basic importance of proper health services, companies like the Blue Cross allow us a bit more security and peace of mind in a world that seems to have lost a lot of its own stability and comfort. It is exactly that kind of assurance that the Blue Cross aims to give its clients.

Furthermore, the Blue Cross excels in its ability to provide a multitude of services at a high level, instead of just one. This convenience is important, especially when it comes to your health. When you are in need of health services, there is nothing more trying than having to deal with several different companies, all with their different requirements, forms, and levels of service. Blue Cross gives you everything in once place, with a standard level of high service, and the assurance that they’re easy to reach and will always be there when you need them.

Blue Cross has become the envy of the health industry, with its proud history, stable present, and bright future. It is an example of what proper health care services should look like in today’s level of quality and technology. It is refreshing to know that a company such as Blue Cross is out there to take care of millions throughout North America.

Richard Cussons is a prolific and diverse writer. You will find out more about The Blue Cross at Blue Cross Resources.