North Carolina Blue Cross to Refund $155 Million to Policyholders
North Carolina’s largest health insurer will refund $155 million to more than 215,000 individual policyholders as a result of the Affordable Care Act that took effect earlier this year, the company said.
Individual policyholders will get back the equivalent of one and a half months of premiums. The average refund will be about $700 and should be paid before the end of the year.
The company also said the state Insurance Department approved an overall 5.3 percent increase in rates for its Blue Advantage policies, less than the 7 percent Blue Cross had requested. Those increases are driven by higher medical costs and individual policyholders may see larger or smaller increases in their premiums and some may see a decrease.
The refund is coming from reserves that were set aside to pay for future health care for current policyholders. Health care reform will require those policies be phased out or changed significantly in 2014 and the company won’t need as much money to cover future costs.
“The refund reflects a unique one-time circumstance,” Blue Cross spokesman Lew Borman said.
Blue Cross was not required to make the refund nor did it require the approval of the Insurance Department.
“We worked together on it,” Insurance Department spokeswoman Kristin Milam said. “It was certainly something that we strongly encouraged.”
Milam said a refund is better than using the excess reserves to reduce future rate increases because it “gets the money in their hands now _ money that people need.”
Blue Cross insures 3.7 million people in North Carolina. About 300,000 of its customers buy their own health insurance.