Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey Statement concerning Governor Chris Christie's FY 2018 Budget Address
Horizon is always willing to partner with New Jersey to drive down health costs and expand health care access to all our residents. As New Jersey’s largest health insurer serving over 900,000 Medicaid members, Horizon knows well that more is needed to help New Jersey’s most vulnerable and financially challenged residents and agrees with the Governor that more should be done. However, raiding the reserves that protect the families we insure, including our Medicaid members, will only make insurance more expensive and less secure. The claim that Horizon and our policy holders have an ‘abundant surplus’ is just plain wrong -- those reserves have only enough to cover 75 days of claims or just a single day of hospital care for every person Horizon insures. Moreover, the company’s net income was less than 1% of revenues in 2016. Despite being structured as a not-for-profit, Horizon paid more than half a billion dollars in federal, state and local taxes last year. While other insurance companies have left, Horizon has stayed in the Affordable Care Act marketplace demonstrating our commitment to New Jersey. Instead of taking our members’ reserves, we should partner to create a permanent and stable source of revenue to help New Jersey’s less fortunate by tackling, once and for all, the $1 billion dollar out-of-network billing abuse and surprise medical billing problem.
About Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the state’s oldest and largest health insurer is a tax-paying, not-for-profit health service corporation, providing a wide array of medical, dental, and prescription insurance products and services. Horizon BCBSNJ is leading the transformation of health care in New Jersey by working with doctors and hospitals to deliver innovative, patient-centered programs that reward the quality, not quantity, of care patients receive. Learn more at www.HorizonBlue.com. Horizon BCBSNJ is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association serving more than 3.8 million members.
