insurance companies

Leaders Call for Far-Reaching Changes to Meet Oregon’s Healthcare Workforce Needs

How insurance companies pay providers, how universities work with hospitals, how accrediting bodies set requirements, and how students pay for medical school are all factors in workforce challenges that are especially severe in rural areas.

From family physicians to occupational therapists, Oregon faces a shortage of healthcare professionals – and getting the right people trained and deployed to the communities that need them most will require fresh thinking and new approaches from universities, hospital systems, insurance companies

By: 
Courtney Sherwood

Profits Fall as Membership Rises at Oregon’s Insurance Companies

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First-quarter results show only Providence profitable among the state’s largest insurers, while Moda, Regence, Kaiser all grow membership despite financial losses

Oregon’s health insurance companies seem to be putting membership growth ahead of profitability.

By: 
Courtney Sherwood

Senate Votes to Require Health Insurers to Send Checks to Providers, Not Patients

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After insurers targeted Adventist Medical Center, the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems teamed up with the Oregon Ambulatory Surgery Centers to support a bill ending the chaotic practice of sending checks to patients when the insurer has been billed by an out-of-network provider.

The Oregon Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would require health insurance companies to send payments directly to the healthcare provider, and not the patient -- something currently practiced by Regence BlueCross BlueShield, Lifewise Health Plan and UnitedHealthCare, and possibly other insurance companies.

By: 
Chris Gray

Network Adequacy Legislation Sails Through House, Directs State to Write Details

House Bill 2468 attempts to respond to Oregon’s lagging standards for adequate provider networks for health plans and sets up a lengthy Insurance Division process to ensure consumers are buying health plans that actually link them to a proper number of healthcare providers to give them the health coverage advertised, and do so in a transparent way.

The House passed Insurance Commissioner Laura Cali’s bill aimed at improving network adequacy for health insurance plans on Wednesday by a 56-1 vote, giving her and her agency a clear vote of confidence toward beginning the long administrative work needed to bring Oregon up to the standards of ne

By: 
Chris Gray

Buehler Shepherds Right-To-Try Bill to House Floor with Limitations

The libertarian measure would give patients access to unapproved drugs if they have been given less than a year to live. Patients would be on their own with the drugs and have to assume responsibility for any complications, which insurers would not have to cover.

The House Health Committee greenlighted the libertarian “right-to-try” initiative, sending an amended House Bill 2300 to the floor on a unanimous vote.

By: 
Chris Gray

Health Net President Chris Ellertson Leads with 86 Percent Salary Increase

The Lund Report
Looking at the executive compensation among health insurance executives in 2012, John Stellmon, who retired from Regence last April, was the highest paid, earning $1.8 million, a 537% increase from 2011

April 17, 2013 – The profit margins of Oregon’s health insurance companies remained razor thin last year, but that didn’t hinder any of their top executives from taking home bigger paychecks.

By: 
Diane Lund-Muzikant
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