Some health insurers offer extras - like apps to find cheapest meds

Source: Detroit Free PressSept.self storage 29--One Michigan insurer will offer an app that will help you find free or cost-effective medications close to you. Another will offer discounts for the gym or for exercise equipment. Still another will assign you a personal customer service assistant.As the Michigan Health Insurance Marketplace launches on Tuesday, consumers -- many of whom might be buying insurance for the first time -- will find some surprisingly innovative add-ons to the policies available on the exchange.-- Full coverage: What you need to know about the Affordable Health Care ActHealth Alliance Plan (HAP), for example, will assign a personal customer service assistant to all new customers -- someone to help them find a specialist, sort through coverage questions and even find a doctor if they're suddenly sick when they're traveling overseas."It will be, 'Hi, I'm Kate. I'm here to help you,' " said Lori Rund, who heads product development for HAP.That customer service rep, Rund said, will be assigned to a client for two years, helping them navigate a drastically changed world of health insurance.The marketplace will be an online exchange where tens of thousands of Michiganders will be able to buy insurance at affordable rates. It is a key piece of the federal Affordable Care Act that clicks into place nationally next week. The law requires almost everyone to have health insurance by next year unless they fit a narrow class of exemptions.A six-month general enrollment period starts Tuesday, offering Michigan consumers up to 142 plans. All are required to have a core set of essential benefits such as hospitalization and free preventive care -- putting many services that used to be unavailable within reach of the estimated 1.4 million uninsured or underinsured Michiganders.Anyone can shop the exchange -- .healthcare.gov -- though only those who are underinsured and uninsured and fall between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level will be eligible for credits. (The federal poverty level in 2014 will be an income of $11,490 for an individual and $23,550 for a family of four.)The add-ons could help improve consumers' health and save them money at the same time, said Diana Criss, senior director of operations at East Lansing-based Consumers Mutual Insurance of Michigan, the state's new insurer on the exchange, along with a dozen others.Consumers Mutual is a co-op created with money provided through the Affordable Care Act, so policyholders will "own" the company and make up more than half of the迷利倉17-member board. That means extra pressure in making sure Consumers' policies make sense for the patient, said Criss, a longtime insurance executive who has spent much of her career looking at clinical cost data.On Consumers policies, patients with any of 26 common chronic conditions -- asthma, diabetes or hypertension, for example -- get a pass on co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for doctor's visits, lab tests and medications to keep their diseases under control. They'll be free, Criss said.Too often, even small out-of-pocket expenses can mean struggling families skip medications or routine doctor visits. Chronic conditions can spiral out of control, leading to costly trips to the emergency room and hospital stays."If you remove the barriers, you can keep your sick people well," Criss said.That's why Consumers offers a phone app for its customers. They will be able to punch in their medications to find the closest providers of low-cost or free prescriptions.These sort of policy add-ons, like discounts on a treadmill and other workout equipment that Priority Health will offer, should be only part of the consideration when consumers head out onto the marketplace, said Josh Fangmeier, health policy analyst at Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation in Ann Arbor.Nearly all plans fall into one of four tiers. A platinum plan, for example, might have the priciest monthly premium but cover about 90% of medical bills.So someone with a costly medical procedure ahead might want to consider the platinum plan to pay for most of those expenses and the follow-up care and medications. On the other hand, someone who is willing to bet they'll stay healthy all year might want to risk buying a lower-cost bronze plan, knowing that high costs will kick in only if they get sick or injured, Fangmeier said.The right plan for one person might be the wrong deal for another. "It really depends on the services that an individual uses," Fangmeier said.Even within those tiers, there will be variety. Some plans might have small co-pays on regular doctor visits, but higher deductibles on hospitalization, for example. And people younger than 30 will be able to purchase catastrophic plans, where premiums might be low, but only the care for serious injuries will be covered.Fangmeier said consumers must pay careful attention to avoid costly surprises later in the year.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Detroit Free Press Visit the Detroit Free Press at .freep.com Distributed by MCT Information Services自存倉