Humana, Cigna waiving some patient health insurance costs | Coronavirus Conversations

you had some news over the weekend with Cigna and Humana you both announced a new policy about so talk to us about your announcement this weekend yeah well we we announced that we're eliminating all cost-sharing deductibles co-pays coinsurance for the treatment of kovat 19:00 the argument is that at a time where there is incredible anxiety and stress both in terms of our economic

stability and in terms of our health the last thing we want is for anyone to be worried about their finances when they're combating this disease we wanted to take that issue that financial issue off the table so by doing this we now have fully covered the testing the services around the testing and now all the services around treatment so at least we have removed finances from from

the list of concerns for our members in the setting of this pandemic I mean thank you so much for that that feels like a really fun feeling a very powerful statement from both of your company is to say there it's so important to go out and get tested because knowing your status is a huge part of stemming the spread yeah that's right so we know that people avoid treatment avoid testing because of the finances and that is bad for our members

but it's also bad for society at a time where we really need more information and we really need to be able to identify and appropriately manage those who are infected well thank you for that because it goes right into our next question which is you know so many of us who are lucky enough to have insurance know that you have to stay in-network and so my next question is how are you guys managing you know Church parking lots and drive throughs as in-network so it's a really good question it's particularly poignant at a time where as our other guests have been

noting our challenges around access there aren't enough tests for everyone and it is our obligation as a payer to make sure that our patients our members have access to the tests they need so if there are no in-network tests available then or we have to make it available we have to make out-of-network tests available for our members as well and in those settings we are still offering we

are we are covering with and waiving co-payments coinsurance and deductibles so that again the finances should not be any impediment to people getting tested understood thank you for that I'm speaking of other things that insurance companies are doing and especially you guys we're talking about telemedicine availability you know if we're supposed to stay home people are nervous about going into hospitals or even minute clinics because that's obviously what other sick people are or other people with other problems so talk to us about

telemedicine availability and coverage so I'm glad you brought it up I think it may end up being telemedicine maybe one of the really transformative pieces of our healthcare system throughout this pandemic we know that if we have a if we have a patient or a member who is potentially infected but not that sick the last place you want them to go is to a clinical setting where they're going to be exposed to others potentially expose others to their illness if they

have it or if they don't have it to be exposed to others and potentially contract the illness the goal is to keep folks with coronavirus isolated and separated so staying away from clinical settings is so critical so we've offered a number of approaches to try to make telehealth more available we have vendors in for each of our our main products that can serve as an urgent care resource MD live and doc on demand

but more importantly we've opened up relation we've opened up the opportunity for everyone's doctor primary care doctor a specialist a behavioral health physician to call their patients just using a cell phone we will pay the the provider the full cost that they would have been that they would have charged us had it been a face-to-face visit and we are eliminating all cost-sharing for our members the rationale here again

is that we have a role to play by leveraging the right set of financial incentives and policies to keep our members safe and at home and to reduce the spread of the disease and telehealth we think is a really critical way it's interesting to note though that if you look at the most progressive primary care practices that we work with primary care practices that focus on vulnerable elderly and have developed more progressive care management policies

we're seeing that they're reporting on average that about 90 to 95 percent of their of their visits now are being conducted via telehealth for months answering that that number was zero that's a huge so I do want to this is a lot of is this an industry-wide goal like are you senior care companies making these kinds of pivots or talk about these kinds of pivots yeah I mean we're we are certainly not alone we all recognize that there is I mean there's a

clear set of guiding principles here that says let's keep patients away from providers let's keep patients away from other patients let's minimize the spread of disease the the rationale for using telehealth is entirely straightforward but it will be interesting because I'm not sure we're going to end up returning to you know the status quo pre coronavirus after we've learned the sort of the value of this patient-centered convenient a new way of delivering

medicine hey thanks for watching if you like this video check out these other videos from USA Today to stay up to date with all the latest news