State Farm health insurance has teamed up with Humana in an alliance to offer Medicare Prescription Drug Plans, also known as Medicare Part D.  Humana’s Medicare Prescription Drug Plans offers guidance on how to save money on your prescriptions.  They make it easy for you to keep track of prescription costs.  They offer a SmartSummary RxSM statement which shows what you bought and the varying costs.

It’s benefits like these that make State Farm and Humana Medicare supplement insurance plans unique.  Humana offers 3 stand alone Medicare Prescription Drug Plans to help balance your health insurance budget.  In today’s economy and so many pinching pennies, this benefit proves extremely valuable.

State Farm and Humana have joined to market Medicare Advantage plans as well.  This type of plan combines the benefit of prescription drug coverage with the Medicare health coverage in one convenient plan.  They offer additional benefits when compared to Original Medicare.

According to the Humana Big Book commercial, signing up for Humana’s medicare program can be as easy as 3 steps.  Upon viewing their website it’s really true.

Obtaining Humana insurance quotes online has always been relatively simple, but now the company is marketing strong their Medicare programs.  With more and more Medicare eligible consumers becoming internet savvy, more programs are encouraging shopping around online.  Humana claims to have a wide array of plans so you are bound to find one that will fit your needs.  On their website you can easily compare Medicare Advantage plans, compare prescription drug plans, review plan features and enroll online instantly if you choose to do so.

Now is the perfect time for marketing Medigap supplemental insurance plans because the time period for changing Medicare Advantage plans or prescription plans for ‘10 is January 1 through March 31.  This holds true unless you recently became eligible for Medicare or if you have certain special circumstances.

Both sides abandoned bi-partisanship concerning health care reform a long, long time ago. Now it’s official, as these things go.

With both chambers having passed a version of comprehensive health care reform the bills are headed for a House-Senate conference committee. Usually this committee, made up of both Democrats and Republicans, iron out differences between the two proposals and produces something both the House and Senate can be expected to pass.

There are a lot of formal, procedural issues involved in this process. Usually, for example, three formal votes need to be held in both the Senate and the House before the conference committee formally convenes. Since each vote can be filibustered in the Senate, Democrats would need to bring all 60 members of its caucus to the floor for each of these votes. Then, at least in the Senate (I’m not sure about the House) there can be votes on non-binding recommendations to the conference committee members. As noted in an Associated Press article, this would “require Democrats to vote on political controversies such as wiping out the legislation’s proposed cuts in Medicare ….” As 2010 is an election year, this is a political weapon Democrats would prefer to keep out of the hands of the GOP.

So, according to the AP article, Democrats in Congress, along with the White House, are intent on bypassing the traditional conference committee procedures, reducing the opportunity for the GOP to force embarrassing votes or to delay a final version of health care reform legislation. I don’t pretend to be an expert on Congressional procedures, so I can’t explain how this is done or why it’s permitted. But the “why” and “how” is less important than the fact of it.

What this means is that negotiations over the final version of health care reform will be conducted solely among Democrats. This was going to happen anyway as there is no common ground between the parties on the legislation. As a result, the votes of Democratic moderates become even more clearly critical to passage of the reform legislation. It also means that Congress is far more likely to achieve its goal of putting health care reform legislation on President Barack Obama’s desk before his State of the Union address anticipated to be given in early February.

Republicans will still be vocal on health care reform. They’ll still seek to delay the legislation. Their task, however, will now be much more difficult.

PacificSource Health Plans has acquired Clear One Health Plans for $46 Million.  Under the merger agreement, Clear One will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Eugene Oregon based PacificSource.

The merger will allow PacificSource to increase its presence in Central Oregon and expand into the Medicare and Medicaid markets through Clear One Health Plans  operation while continuing to devote energy towards PacificSource’s commercial health insurance business.

The deal still requires approval by the Oregon Insurance Division, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Oregon Division of Medical Assistance Programs, as well as final shareholder approval.

Bend Oregon based Clear One provides health insurance, including Medicare Advantage plans, commercial plans, individual health insurance plans as well as administrative services to individuals and businesses throughout the West.

After the merger, PacificSource Health Plans is expected to cover about 228,000 members and PacificSource TPA about 80,000. Employer clients are expected to total 5,676 and 303 respectively.

Houston, Texas elected a new mayor earlier this month named Annise Parker.  According to the article “Houston Is The Largest City to Elect Openly Gay Mayor” by James C. McKinley on NYTimes.com, voters gave a solid victory to this openly gay woman.

There are some smaller cities that have elected openly gay mayors, but this is the largest city in history to do so.  Her success came in a conservative state which makes the victory that much more historic.  Many Houston residents believe this is a huge step forward for the city as diversity is embraced.

Ms. Parker has a challenging job ahead as she faces many important issues such as Houston health insurance.  With Texas suffering from a very high rate of uninsured residents, it’s important that elected officials of major cities such as Parker, make health insurance reform a top priority.  With health insurance weighing heavily on the government’s agenda, health insurance quotes may change noticeably in the coming months.