Insurance carriers need to improve if service fundamentals by “proactively” offer advice and provide customized options to employers if they are to increase employer satisfaction with health insurance plans, a new study suggests.

Four of the nation’s largest health insurers had “dramatic reductions” in their claims payment denial rates since last year, according to new American Medical Association research.

Increased “cost pressures” facing health insurers could mean that an effort to free insurance agent and broker commissions from the grip of the federal health reform law might not lead to restored payments.

The Maine Supreme Court has upheld a state insurance department 2009 decision reducing a health insurance rate increase proposed by Anthem.

California’s insurance commissioner says three insurers have agreed to comply with his request that they delay increasing health insurance rates for 60 days past the effective dates for their recent filings with the California Insurance Department.

The new California insurance commissioner and the secretary of the U.S. Health Department are working to prevent Blue Shield of California from implementing a rate increase of up to 59%.

A Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliate in New Mexico filed court papers urged the state Supreme Court to block the insurance commissioner’s suspension of its 21% health premium rate increase.

UniCare is exiting the Virginia market, eliminating individual health insurance coverage for about 3,000 people, mostly in Northern Virginia, company officials said.

Aetna withdrew a 19% rate increase in California after “substantial mathematical errors” were uncovered during the state’s review, state insurance regulators said.

WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurer by medical membership, plans to unilaterally implement key provisions of the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act introduced in Congress.