Good News for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona Customers

Today the Arizona Department of Insurance (DOI) announced that insurers may renew grandmothered plans – affecting members who purchased plans between March 24, 2010, and December 31, 2013, for up to two years.

We are very pleased to announce this decision.  It provides Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona customers choice, as well as peace of mind if they want to keep their existing plans, until the end of 2015.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona will extend grandmothered plans for at least one year and assess the impact for subsequent years. As always, we will provide updates as decisions are made.

If you are a Blue Cross Blue Shield non-group customer, you will continue to follow their standard renewal process. You can expect to receive a renewal notice and information about any changes to benefits or rates. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona’s goal is to make sure you understand their options.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona issued the following media statement. (more…)

Myths of Weight Loss Are Plentiful, Researcher Says

By GINA KOLATA

If schools reinstated physical education classes, a lot of fat children would lose weight. And they might never have gotten fat in the first place if their mothers had just breast fed them when they were babies. But be warned: obese people should definitely steer clear of crash diets. And they can lose more than 50 pounds in five years simply by walking a mile a day.

Those are among the myths and unproven assumptions about obesity and weight loss that have been repeated so often and with such conviction that even scientists like David B. Allison, who directs the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, have fallen for some of them.

Now, he is trying to set the record straight. In an article published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine, he and his colleagues . . . to continue click here.