Humana Unveils Small-Employer Health Offerings

October 26, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Humana has launched SmartExpress, a family of health insurance plans designed for businesses with 2 to 299 employees.

A Humana news release said the offerings are designed to allow employers to better control and predict health care costs while giving their employees expanded benefits.

SmartExpress includes up to three plan options, including a choice of two Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) health plans, one with co-payments and the other with benefits based on deductibles, according to the announcement. The program also offers a personal care account (PCA), an optional prepaid savings account that employers can provide in addition to PPO coverage. The PCA is funded by the employers and accompanies a high-deductible PPO from which employees can access their funds with the HumanaAccess VISA card to pay for their deductible.

Should employees use the entire prepaid amount and their plan deductible and then need coverage for emergency hospitalizations or services, a traditional PPO plan is activated to provide further coverage. Unused PCA funds can be rolled over to the following year if the employee purchases a similar PCA plan from Humana, the announcement said.

The news release said that SmartExpress also provides prescription drug coverage – either RxImpact, which provides access to four broad drug classes at different levels of discounted pricing or Rx4, a four-tiered selection of drugs that provides options among brand-name and generic drugs. Under RxImpact, the employer chooses the allowance amounts for each category of drugs based on their company’s benefit contribution strategy.

More information about the company is at http://www.humana.com .

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