Insurers Object to New Provision in Medicare Law
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: August 22, 2004
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 - A major obstacle to the success of the new Medicare law has emerged in recent weeks: private insurers have told the Bush administration that they will not expand their role in Medicare if they have to serve large multistate regions, as the White House wants.
Congress sharply increased payments to private health plans last year in the hope that they would serve many more Medicare beneficiaries.
But the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, the backbone of the nation's private health insurance system, and other insurers said it was not feasible for them to establish networks of doctors and hospitals spanning large regions like New England or the Midwest.
They want the government to designate 50 regions, one for each state. That is the preference stated emphatically, in separate letters to the Bush administration, by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and by America's Health Insurance Plans, the chief lobby for the health insurance industry.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/politics/22medicare.html?hp(Free registration required)