Insurance Rumors

[somarco]

Hard to win on STM, even if you are writing a lot on a national basis like Time insurance.

Even though you have a 5 yr look back on pre-ex, and the policies normally are 6 months or less, all it takes is a few accidents to kill your loss ratio on a small block.

I would not be surprised to see similar action by Blue in other states.

 

[STIBROKER]

but not all Blues are wellpoint.....interesting to see if other company's start pulling them.....

I would not be surprised to see similar action by Blue in other states.

 

[somarco]

Doesn't matter if they are Wellpoint/Anthem or not. Each state is one company (sometimes two). Rates, loss ratio's, etc are based on statewide results, not national.

Carriers like Time that write in most of the 57 states can pool all STM, major med, etc across state lines and review loss ratio's for the national block and adjust accordingly.

State carriers, like Blue, Coventry and a few others don't have that luxury.

 

[bill3173]

Hard to win on STM, even if you are writing a lot on a national basis like Time insurance.

Even though you have a 5 yr look back on pre-ex, and the policies normally are 6 months or less, all it takes is a few accidents to kill your loss ratio on a small block.

I would not be surprised to see similar action by Blue in other states.

I did a lot of Time STM a couple of years ago, and you would have to see the claims paid to believe it. Even on my little block, the claims paid vs. premiums collected was like 2:1. Of course Time is king in that market and they paid claims just like Major Med. I didn't fudge on their guidelines, so my clients were more likely to have their claims paid.

 

[somarco]

Time has had multiple lawsuits over the years, mostly on STM claims that were denied. No way to know how many were consumer direct purchases where they did not understand or bother to read the pre-ex clause.

No doubt there are many agents who don't warn about the dangers of STM and pre-ex conditions.

Consumers buy and agents sell on low price. Bad combination.

I have very cautiously sold STM over the years. Had one last year that dropped her major med in favor of STM over my objections. It did not work out well for her. Auto accident, claims xs of $60k and then coverage ran out.

 

[dgoldenz]

Anthem's rates here in VA for STM are so low that I wouldn't be surprised if they do the same thing here. They don't ask any health questions either except for pregnancy on the app.

 

[somarco]

At least one carrier stopped offering a 12 month policy. The HPA 12x3 was a steady seller for me until they pulled it.

Would not be surprised to see all 12 month contracts go away.

Other carriers, such as BSBSGA and Humana have changed the underwriting questions since introducing their product.

Blue never asked for ht or wt and guess what?

Every XXL prospect in Georgia applied for coverage, or so it seemed.

Didn't take them long to file a new app with the ht & wt question.

 

[ABC]

Anthem/Wellpoint had come out with advanced short term policies. There was co pays for both RX and Office.
They were priced much higher than old STM. I sold a couple a month mostly to fill the gaps for waiting periods on group.

I personally think they had a lot of people take the STM over the Individual contract because of price.

Golden Rule is suppose to come out with a 11 month STM contract that will not be in the MLR. It will be interesting to see if they bring that product to market.