Health insurers around the nation are responding rapidly to the potentially cost-increasing elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
One response: narrow networks, in which plan members have fewer choices of physicians if they want the benefits of remaining in their network. Now, the University of Pennsylvania has taken a close look at the narrow network trend and has reported back that Georgians in general find themselves in the narrowest networks of all 50 states. A dozen states had no narrow networks, by the definition created by the researchers. For states that had narrow networks, the lowest percentages were found in Idaho and North Carolina.
The study was done by the university's Leonard Davis Institute, with funding by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Researchers studied silver plans representing 394 unique provider networks offered by 267 issuers.
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
