Posts Tagged ‘ Blue Cross ’

Week Adjourned: 6.26.09

June 26th, 2009. By LucyC

Top Class Actions

Quiet Company…loud ex-employees? Seems some former Northwestern Mutual (NML) employees missed the “Shhhh!” memo when they worked there. The Milwaukee-based life insurance giant has been slapped with a $200 million class action lawsuit by former employees who allege NML violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and California’s overtime and minimum wage laws. Their complaint also states that NML “intentionally and repeatedly” misclassified sales employees as independent contractors: independent contractors are exempt from federal and state wage and hour laws, while full-time employees are not.

Any of this sound familiar? It should. NML was sued on similar allegations in Pennsylvania in 2008. That time around NML won the lawsuit, which resulted in their being able to maintain their financial representatives as ‘independent contractors.’ According to media reports, NML has about 7,000 “financial representatives nationwide.” Be interesting to see if history does repeat itself here.

Fill ‘er kinda up? If you’ve been running out of gas sooner than expected—and I’m referring to propane here, check your cylinder. If it’s from Blue Rhino and AmeriGas, you might be interested to know that they are facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that they reduced the amount of propane provided in tanks sold as ‘full’ without telling their customers.

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Tags: Amerigas, autism, Blue Cross, Blue Rhino, California Overtime, Northwestern Mutual, Week Adjourned
Posted in Emerging Issues, Employment | No Comments »

Making Sense of Out of Network Medical Overcharges: Get it, Got it, Good!

May 5th, 2009. By LucyC

Here’s a riddle: what’s something you never want to be without but you can never quite “get”?

Answer: Health Insurance.

Particularly if you live in New York and you’ve been trying to “get” your out of network Explanation of Benefits statements. The recent NY Attorney General’s Health Care Report determined the database used by many big-name insurers (think Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Health Link, Unicare, United Health Care, Wellpoint/Anthem) to compute out-of-network fees has been understating “usual and customary” rates. Translation: you may have paid more than you should’ve when going out-of-network.

How so? Here’s an example…

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Tags: Aetna, Blue Cross, Cigna, health insurance, out of network medical charges, United Health Care
Posted in Drugs/Medical | 3 Comments »