Insurers Tackle Texas Uninsured Market: Report

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Texas is targeting middle-income uninsured Texans in the individual market, HealthLeaders points out. The Texas Blues worked with the Houston Uninsured Task Force last spring and summer to develop an inpatient hospital product, the Foundation Hospital Care Plan, to cover catastrophic events. The individually rated product features premiums running from $15 to $115 a month, depending on age and gender, with a lifetime maximum of $2 million in coverage.

The Texas Blues also recently completed an online promotion to benefit Project Access Dallas, a program devoted to helping provide basic healthcare services to uninsured residents of Dallas County. With this promotion, held between Nov. 29, 2006, and March 1, 2007, the insurer donated $1 to Project Access Dallas for each member who logged in to the Blue Access for Members Web site and chose to receive electronic versions of their explanation of benefits statements instead of paper versions. More than 13,000 members made the switch, reports HealthLeaders.

Texas has an uninsured rate of 24.2%, according to 2005 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.