Sen. Rockefeller Questions Mc's Health Plans

[Guest guest]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703859204575526301124449196.html?m\

od=googlenews_wsj

OCTOBER 1, 2010, 4:59 P.M. ET

Sen. Rockefeller Questions Mc's Health Plans

By JANET ADAMY

A top Senate Democrat is asking a health insurer that provides plans for

Mc's Corp. restaurant workers to disclose details of the plans to the

Senate.

West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of Senate Committee on Commerce,

Science and Transportation, on Friday sent the request to Beacham,

president and chief executive of BCS Insurance Group of Oak Brook Terrace, Ill.

Sen. Rockefeller asked for five years of data explaining how much the carrier

charges in premiums and spends on care, as well as the number of workers who

reach the plans' annual benefit caps.

His letter followed an article in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week

reporting that Mc's warned federal regulators it could drop its

health-insurance plan for nearly 30,000 restaurant workers unless regulators

waived a new requirement of the health overhaul. The requirement, known as the

minimum medical loss ratio, concerns the percentage of revenue received from

premiums that must be spent on benefits.

Mc's provides a " mini-med " limited benefit plan for workers at 10,500 U.S.

locations. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual

benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

Sen. Rockefeller said the details of the plan reported this week indicate " your

company is apparently spending a significantly lower percentage of Mc's

employees' health-care premiums on their medical care " than is required by the

health overhaul law. The law requires that plans pay a minimum of between 80%

and 85% of their revenue on medical care instead of overhead expenses.

Those figures suggest that " Mc's hourly wage workers are setting aside

portions of their paychecks for an insurance product that may not be providing

them a good value, " he wrote. The $2,000 maximum annual coverage limit would not

come close to covering the costs of hospital emergency services or the delivery

of a child, he added.

Mr. Beacham and BCS didn't respond to requests for comment. A Mc's

spokeswoman said the company was aware of the senator's request and declined to

comment on it. Sen. Rockefeller requested that the carrier respond by Oct. 15.