Contents
Insurance Settlement
- Blue Cross is being sued for violated antitrust laws by entering into an agreement not to compete with each other and to limit competition among themselves in selling health insurance and administrative services for health insurance.
Settling Defendants deny all allegations of wrongdoing and assert that their conduct results in lower healthcare costs and greater access to care for their customers. The Court has not decided who is right or wrong. Instead, Plaintiffs and Settling Defendants have agreed to a Settlement to avoid the risk and cost of further litigation.
Check your Eligibility and File a Claim Here
Who is Eligible?
If you were covered by certain Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance or administrative services plans between February 2008 and October 2020, you may be a Class Member.
You may be eligible to receive payment if you are an Individual, Insured Group (and their employees) or Self-Funded Account (and their employees) that purchased or were enrolled in a Blue Cross or Blue Shield health insurance or administrative services plan during one of the two Settlement Class Periods. Government accounts are excluded from the Class.
The Settlement Class Period for Individuals and Insured Groups is from February 7, 2008, through October 16, 2020. The Settlement Class Period for Self-Funded Accounts is from September 1, 2015 through October 16, 2020. Dependents, beneficiaries (including minors), and non-employees are NOT eligible to receive payment.
All Individuals, Insured Groups, and Self-Funded Accounts that purchased or were enrolled in a Blue Cross or Blue Shield health insurance or administrative services plan during the applicable Class Period will also benefit from the parts of the Settlement requiring Settling Defendants to change certain of their practices that were alleged to be anticompetitive. Dependents, beneficiaries (including minors), and non-employees will benefit from this part of the Settlement.
How Much Will We Get?
The Net Settlement Fund is estimated to be approximately $1.9 billion. No good estimates are given for how much you’ll get when filing.
Important Dates
- February 7, 2008 through October 16, 2020 is the affected timeframe for Individuals and Insured Groups
- September 1, 2015 through October 16, 2020 is the affected timeframe for Self-Funded Account
- October 20, 2021 is the Fairness Hearing
- November 5, 2021 is the final date to file a claim
Final Thoughts
Lots of people use the various branches of Blue Cross insurance and will be eligible for this settlement. Easy process to file – they don’t force you to give exact dates and the like (though they ask for that if possible). Some people even got a postcard with a unique code to use, others got one with no unique code and have to use the regular filing process. Hopefully it ends up being a nice check whenever this all settles.
Hat tip to reader Davis
There’s an interesting calculator for payout amounts on this site: https://www.claimdepot.com/settlements/bcbs-subscriber-settlement
I’d be surprised if it’s really accurate, as it estimated to pay me thousands.
I get a whole $1.02, what a windfall though surprised I will get anything as my employer paid all premiums while employed with them.
Mine says all 0s for premiums, and about $160 for the ASO fields for 5 years. 🤷♂️
I believe this is why we’re seeing lower payouts
https://www.bcbssettlement.com/admin/services/connectedapps.cms.extensions/1.0.0.0/asset?id=5399b96e-406f-4a1a-89ba-09c960f94107&languageId=1033&inline=true
The Settlement provides that payments will be based, in part, on premiums paid for BCBS health insurance or administrative services plans during the relevant periods between 2008 and 2020. The Settlement further provides default formulas for the Claims Administrator to use when determining what percentage of the premium was paid by an employer/entity and what percentage was contributed by its employees/members.
100% of premiums for employees who do not file claims are allocated to the claiming employer. When an employee does claim, their premium share is determined through the default formulas, which provide that employees with single coverage are allocated 15% (for fully-insured health insurance) or 18% (for administrative plans) of the total premium paid on their behalf by their employer, and employees with family coverage are allocated 34% (for fully-insured health insurance) or 25% (for administrative plans), with the remainder allocated to the employer. For a full discussion of how these formulas will be used in calculating claims, please refer to the Plan of Distribution on the Settlement Website
I ended up with $775.08 in premiums and all zeros for the ASO amount. Which seems low for a 2 year time period.
lol
> 2013 Premium Amount: $261.38, ASO Amount: $0.00
> 2014 Premium Amount: $40.68, ASO Amount: $0.00
> 2016 Premium Amount: $0.00, ASO Amount: $0.01
I’m sure this isn’t accurate but not worth it to contest for me. looking forward to my $0.01 virtual egift card!
I got an email today which is the first time I have seen this info. I clicked on the link and it showed premium amt. paid by year and then a column labeled “ASO”.
The prem. paid by me is wrong for 4 years and then it’s right on 4 years.
What is ASO?
do you think it’s woth disputing the math on this? my prem. amt. total is off by about $9000.
It might be that you’re covered under an employer plan so didn’t pay directly into BCBS? Saw this when googling:
The settlement includes administrative services only (ASO) contracts, which are a type of Self-Funded Health Benefit Plan
HR said we were self insured with BCBS for 4 years and “not” self insured with BCBS the other 4 years. So I am not going to dispute the totals. thanks for the info celia.
Got my email late last night, looked at what they claimed I paid in premiums; it seems very low! (Like about 1/6 or less of what I actually paid!) Thus, I’m thinking about going through the trouble of disputing, but don’t have complete digital or paper copies of the complete period of coverage. Did anyone actually get their reward yet? If you did, can you tell me what premiums were paid? I’m trying to see if it’s worth my time to reconstruct all this info, as I’m fearful that they’ll want actual payment receipts.
I did mine about a week or so ago. I’ve got over 50k in premiums over the full period. Was a deductible expense so easy to confirm for me with tax records.
Did electronic payout to be in the first round of payments but no idea when that first round is going out.
Mine is just shy of $5k premiums for 2yrs, 10mos. Don’t itemize so it will be a little more cumbersome to pull up data; BCBS said I’d paid about $750 in premiums…WAY off.
I’ll be interested to see the payout numbers. Some are saying it’s a percentage of premiums paid (2-3%), some are saying $300 for all claimants (see above for not believing everything). Of course, if I end up with a huge EGC, that is not an idea form, but what are you going to do. 58k in premiums and I usually just a flu shot once a year. I suppose I should be happy I didn’t even need to use it.
Look in your inbox or spam folder for the subject: Blue Cross Blue Shield Settlement – Claim Notice
Supposedly there are 5.6 million claimants for the $1.78 billion settlement fund. If equally distributed, that would be about $300 per claimant. This is a very rough estimate. The actual distribution amount is determined by a formula: the premiums you paid divided by the total premiums paid by all claimants, then this figure is multiplied by $1.78 billion.
The settlement payout will be sent by “electronic debit card”. Hopefully this will be a Visa or Mastercard that can be easily liquidated.
I got the e-mail as well. The way I understood it is that if you do not select the debit card option (do nothing) you will eventually get a check. I am assuming they will first send payments to those who elected “electronic debit card”.
Also, I guess it goes without saying, but the $300 estimate would be an average, so someone who was insured with BCBS for only 1 year would receive a much smaller check than someone who has been insured for 6-7 years within the eligible period. Of course it also depends on the cost of the insurance
Received an e-mail today that landed in my junk folder for the BCBS settlement. Looks like we’ll finally be getting our money. When I signed in with the claim and pin provided it showed my annual premiums from 2010 to 2016. They said I should receive payment within 30 days of submitting. Make sure to check your spam folders.
They said you have 30 days to dispute premium paid in their record, not that they’ll issue payment within 30 days.