Insurer Regence BlueCross BlueShield will drop its low-premium health plan

0 Comments | Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), October, 2003

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

The state's largest health insurer is pulling the plug on one of its insurance plans designed to make consumers more aware of the actual costs of health care.

Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon launched the plan, called DirectBlue, as a pilot project in Lane County in May 2002, but it notified employers last month that it was dropping the plan at the end of the year.

Even with 12,000 subscribers, the plan wasn't working the way Regence thought it would, said Jeff Brown, Regence's assistant vice president for sales in Oregon.

"The plan design was different than what we'd been offering in other markets," he said Tuesday. "At the end of the day, it's not meeting the (financial) goals we were...