News

Health Insurance Provider Issues Incorrect Rates

By Ryan Mcaskill

A computer error caused BlueCross BlueShield to issue incorrect 2015 rates to nearly 42,000 customers.

- During the open enrollment period for health insurance that is currently underway, any mistake from a provider can be enough to cause a consumer to look else where. One company is about see what that could mean first hand.

BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina had a blunder last week. An estimated 42,000 customers around the state received insurance renewal letters with incorrect rates. It is believed that 38,000 customers received rates that can be considered too high. The remaining 4,000 customers received rate that are lower that they should be.

In some cases, the cost increase is more than 100 percent. According to the Charlotte Observer, this sparked a number of “irate customers” to start calling the company. One customer reported a rate increase of 51 percent from $1,320 a month to $1,999, another cited an increase of 44 percent, from $1,600 a month to $2,300 a month and a third reported an increase of 86 percent from $700 to $1,300 a month.

BlueCross spokeswoman Michelle Douglas told the news source that most rate increases for Blue Advantage Plan A policies will be below 30 percent, though several thousand will be above that mark. However, no one should receive an increase of more than 100 percent. In total, 239,000 customers received letters, and the average rate increase for the entire group is 13.4 percent.

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  • The error only affected customers who are grandfathered into their policy and have a Blue Advantage health plan with a $15 co-pay for primary care office visits. The error appears to be the result of incorrect information that was transferred from the company’s database to the computer-generated renewal notices. The company acknowledged the error and stated it is already working on corrected versions that customers will be receiving starting on November 3. There is also a customer service line that customers can call if they want to know their rates earlier.

    Douglas told the news source the grandfathered nature of the plans is for customers that signed up before the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. The plans in question are cheaper but provide less coverage. The incorrect rates are on plans that are separate from marketplace health insurance plans purchased under the ACA. These renewal letters are sent out after federal regulators sign off on the rates, which had not actually happened yet this year.

    “We’re very sorry about this mistake and we will be sending corrected rate notices to those customers,” the release reads. “We’re human and sometimes we make mistakes. We regret that it happened and we’re working to fix it. “

    Douglas added this this was a “good old classic human error,” in transferring data.