You may have been recently surprised to receive a check from your health insurance company.
Actually… from whatever health insurance company you were insured with in 2014. What’s the deal? Is this legitimate or some kind of hoax?
Go ahead and deposit the check because it’s legit. Here’s why:
A health insurance company selling individual health insurance policies is required (by the Affordable Care Act) to pay out 80% of the money they receive in premiums in the form of health claims. In other words, for every dollar they take in, they must spend 80 cents paying members’ medical claims.
The technical term for this is “Medical Loss Ratio” (MLR).
If a company does not hit that target in a given year – if they spend less than 80% on claims – they must issue rebate checks to policyholders. Many companies, including Blue Cross Blue Shield of SC, are sending those checks this month.
Remember, these rebate checks are for the 2014 plan year.
So… go deposit them!
