BlueChoice Health plan MyChoice individual health insurance plans – more options

A $5 copay sounds pretty cool, right?
BlueChoice Health Plan has just rolled out a new series of individual health insurance plans in South Carolina called “MyChoice Value Plans.” As the name suggests, they’re designed to offer individual policies at a reduced price.
The $5 copay is the attention-getting feature. It’s $5 for CVS Minute-Clinics in South Carolina and at Doctor’s Care urgent care centers in South Carolina. (Interestingly, both BlueChoice and Doctor’s Care are subsidiaries of Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, so this makes sense.)
The traditional primary care office visit copay is $40 and covers everything that happens during your office visit. Among the other noteworthy benefits:

  • 100% coverage on preventive care (per federal guidelines)
  • A little bit of reimbursement for dental care (not enough to get excited about, but every little bit helps, right?)
  • A free vision checkup once a year at a participating network provider.

So this is a value plan… where are the cost savings coming from? Well, the most relevant places include:

  • There is no copay for visiting a specialist – you pay the discounted network price against the deductible.
  • There is a separate $500 deductible for brand-name (non-generic) prescriptions. In fairness, this is rather common in individual policies.
  • Additional fees (mis-labeled “copays”) for emergency room ($100), in-patient ($300), and out-patient ($200) facility charges.

Most health insurance companies offer some kind of “value” or “budget” plan for individual health insurance customers. These are designed to be a more affordable alternative to their regular plans. Many of these are frankly rubbish, and we don’t bother showing them to people.
A few are decent though. BlueChoice’s MyChoice Value plans falls into the latter category — these seem like nice plans that we would be comfortable showing our budget-conscious clients. If you’d like to see rates and compare it to your current coverage, just let us know!