UniCare to stop providing health insurance in Texas
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-11-24 09:25:45 | Word Count: 410
UniCare is planning to stop providing health insurance to more than 180,000 customers in Texas.
"UniCare is financially sound," spokesman Tony Felts said Tuesday. "However, there are just some competitive pressures in the Texas market that made it difficult for UniCare to continue to be able to offer affordable health insurance and the outstanding customer service that goes along with it."
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Felts did not explain what those competitive pressures were.
The Indianapolis-based company has entered into an agreement with Health Care Service Corp., the parent company of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Texas, to provide guaranteed replacement coverage with "benefits and rates similar to what they had with UniCare,"
Felts said.
John Greeley, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Insurance, said Blue Cross/Blue Shield has pledged "approximately equal premiums" as long as customers switch by Dec. 1.
However, customers don't have to switch to Blue Cross.
UniCare, a subsidiary of health benefits company WellPoint Inc., will continue to offer life, disability, dental and vision coverage in Texas, Felts said. The company also will continue to contract with Texas to provide benefits to 20,000 Medicaid enrollees across the state.
Most UniCare customers probably will have switched by the end of the year, Felts said. But others are expected to remain with the company until their policies expire sometime in 2010, Felts said.
UniCare has about 200 employees in Texas; none are in Austin. Although much of the staff will lose jobs, some people will remain in Plano and Houston to work on the remaining business, Felts said.
UniCare is also pulling out of Illinois, where another 180,000 people will have to find new coverage.
Felts said the decisions to halt business in Texas and Illinois were not connected to federal efforts to overhaul health care.
Of the roughly 180,000 customers in Texas, UniCare has provided health insurance for 26,000 people who work for small employers; 19,000 people who work for large employers; and 127,000 people with individual policies. The other 12,000 people had policies with UniCare HMO that they obtained through their employers.
