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Money & Company

Insurers say they’ll waive fees for H1N1 vaccine

By Marc Lifsher
 and Lisa Girion
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A number of large health maintenance organizations and insurers in California have agreed to not charge co-payments or deductibles for vaccinating patients for the H1N1 flu.

State regulators said they obtained agreements from the companies to waive all charges for administering the vaccine, which is provided free by the federal government.

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‘The likelihood that some health insurers would charge some administrative fee for the vaccine was very, very high,’ state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner said in a conference call. ‘Given the contagious nature of the H1N1, I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.’

Those co-payment fees could have run as high as $40, Poizner said.

Poizner said he received assurances from the state’s six largest health insurers -- Aetna, Anthem/Blue Cross, Blue Shield, CIGNA, HealthNet and United HealthCare/PacifiCare -- to waive administrative fees for giving shots and nasal sprays with the H1N1 vaccine.

The California Department of Managed Health Care said it received similar assurances from HMOs.

-- Marc Lifsher and Lisa Girion

Money & Company
Marc Lifsher

Marc Lifsher is a former business reporter for the Los Angeles Times, based in Sacramento. He previously worked for the Wall Street Journal, Orange County Register, Dallas Times Herald and United Press International. He spent a decade as a foreign correspondent, covering most of the nations of Latin America.

Lisa Girion

As an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times, Lisa Girion produced many high-impact stories, including an investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Myanmar, which was anthologized in “Global Muckraking” (The New Press, 2014). Her investigation into the health insurance practice of dropping sick patients, known as rescission, was cited in the Affordable Care Act. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She left The Times in 2015.

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