At the heart of the debate is the question of what should be a fair profit for health insurers. WellPoint CEO Angela Braly
will likely be grilled on the issue when she appears at a Congressional hearing Wednesday.
President Obama will release a proposal to restart the health-care debate before a bipartisan White House meeting on Feb.
25, one day after WellPoint officials testify before Congress about steep rate increases.
The furor over WellPoint Inc.’s premium hikes have migrated from California to Indiana, where state lawmakers held a
high-profile hearing.
Congressman Andre Carson will make remarks Thursday during a public chastising of Indianapolis-based health insurer for 21-percent rate
hike on individuals.
State House insurance committee chair grills executives about WellPoint’s 21-percent premium increase for individual policyholders
in Indiana.
Three WellPoint executives will be on hand Wednesday morning to answer questions about premium increases on its individual
policies, which have risen as high as 39 percent this year.
The planned rate increase, which state officials estimated would affect about 700,000 customers, averaged 25 percent and would have been as high as 39 percent for some.
Anthem has declined to say how many of its 800,000 individual policyholders in California are being affected by the hike.
But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius demanded specifics in a sternly worded letter.
WellPoint Inc. chief financial officer Wayne DeVeydt said President Obama’s Federal Trade Commission is unlikely to approve
mergers among the biggest insurers.
WellPoint and other health insurers were profitable in 2009, but the lingering unemployment problem is dampening the outlook
for this year.
Doctors are pushing again to strengthen their hands in contract negotiations with health insurers, especially market leader
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
The long-term outlook for health care reform is uncertain, but many analysts are expecting big health insurers like Indianapolis-based
WellPoint to benefit in 2010.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana is doling out $3.1 million to Indianapolis-area doctors—its first payments
based on a local quality measuring system.
The Senate health care committee is investigating how health insurers, including Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., price
the coverage they sell to small businesses.
Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc.’s Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield subsidiary claimed 42.5 percent of central Indiana residents
covered by private health insurance
this year, up from 35-percent last year, according to a market research firm.
WellPoint Inc.’s third-quarter profits soared above analysts’ expectations, but the insurer remains cautious in the face of
the flu and high unemployment.
WellPoint Inc.’s third-quarter profits fell 11 percent, the company reported this morning, but still soared above analysts’ expectations.
The health insurance industry’s sudden counterpunch to the Senate version of health reform echoed in Indiana and
opened a key issue for the rest of the debate: Will covering half of the country’s uninsured mean raising premiums for
the 85 percent of Americans who already have insurance?
The insurance industry sharply escalated its criticism of the Senate health care bill Sunday, charging that the legislation
would shift costs to privately insured people, raising the price of a typical policy by hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars
annually.
The St. Francis hospital system has finalized a multiyear agreement with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana, ending
a months-long dispute over insurance-reimbursement costs, the parties said yesterday.
