Insurance negotiations

We just received a notice from Regence BlueCross BlueShield that University of Utah Health “may leave” the Regence network beginning June 30 of 2023, and that negotiations between the two on a new contract have been going on since 2022 without yet reaching an agreement.

Our personal experience with both Regence and U. of U. Health has been very good for many years, and such a failure of the negotiations would be in the least a black mark on both, eliciting a scramble among the insured for anything close to the services and cost provided up to the present.

It would seem if our lobby- and voter-dependent Congresspeople and the Biden administration can compromise their way to beat the national debt limit deadline in early June, that these two free market health systems should be able to come to a mutually agreeable solution within the next month as well. An old solution might apply: Put the two negotiation teams in a locked room with food and bathroom facilities, and let them out only when they’ve come to a mutually agreeable solution.

Come on, folks, you can do it!

Tom and Sheridan Metcalf

Murray