Blue Cross Helping Customers Understand Health Insurance

Pat Loeb

Pat Loeb's radio experience has the makings of a country song: s...

CBS Philly (con't)

Affordable Care Act Updates: CBSPhilly.com/ACA

Health News & Information: CBSPhilly.com/Health

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Do you find your health insurance really complicated?

You're not alone. Even Blue Cross thinks so, so the region's largest insurer has hired a company to explain benefits to its customers.

Independence Blue Cross is partnering with Accolade Health Assistants. IBC senior vice president of Marketing and Consumer Business Brian Lobely says they'll answer basic questions:

'From benefits questions to where's the right place to get care to what's covered, what isn't covered.'

Lobely says the answers have gotten more complicated as consumers take on more of the charges, and technology provides more treatment alternatives, but Lynn Quigley of Consumers Union says there's another way to help customers:

'Please simplify these products. Consumers would love that.'

Quigley estimates about five-percent of customers understand their insurance:

'It's not that people are dumb. It's that these products are very complicated. we worry about it as consumer advocates, that it's just frankly too hard and leaves consumers too vulnerable as they choose between plans and then go to use the plans that they opted to buy.'

Lobely adds it's the entire health care system that's complicated:

'All the entities, whether it's a doctor, a hospital, an insurance company, we all have to work together to really solve that complexity, to make it easy for a member to say, 'I have this problem, how do I go about solving it?' I don't think it's an overnight solution. It's going to require a lot of collaboration to get us to a simpler way to transact the business.'

Lobely says Blue Cross is working on that.

In the meantime, some 40,000 customers, in 40 of its group plans can call Accolade. Lobely says Blue Cross will see how this trial period goes to see if it will offer the service to more customers.

You may also be interested in these stories: