Insurance industry turns focus to children without coverage

As more employers sift through health plan enrollment to find ineligible dependents, health insurers are offering policies for uninsured children.

By Emily Berry, AMNews staff. Nov. 26, 2007.

Health plans are trying to catch the business created by children left uninsured, ineligible for Medicaid or State Children's Health Insurance Programs, or not covered by a parent's or guardian's plan at work.

Aetna, UnitedHealth Group, BlueCross BlueShield-affiliated plans and other insurers are selling such plans on an individual and group basis, though they say most of their growth is in the individual market.

Families who can afford insurance for children in the household sometimes go without because a child isn't technically a dependent of the worker, or because coverage from work is too costly, said Randy Starnes, director of individual products for BlueCross BlueShield of Texas, a unit of Health Care Service Corp. That company's BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois unit sells such plans as well.

Starnes said the Texas company began to market child-only plans after examining enrollment data and finding a surprising number of individual policies were already written for children alone.

"It's not a far reach to recognize that the traditional makeup of a contract doesn't always work," he said. "In Texas we have a lot of social programs obviously devoted to providing good and adequate [coverage], but they're always income-related, and not everybody qualifies for those programs."

He said some employers will cover part of their employee's health insurance costs, but require the employees to pay the full cost of dependents.

That means for some people, the cost of a child-only plan purchased in the individual market ends up being cheaper than adding a child to coverage at work, he said.