North Bay Business Journal

In its first month since getting state approval for expansion last fall, Sacramento-based HMO Western Health Advantage said it has enrolled some 750 persons into new employer health plans across Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties.

As full-scale implementation of health care reform nears ever closer, looming heavy on the minds of employers, insurers and health care providers, questions continue to swirl around numerous key issues, with California’s online health exchanges high among the heart-burn causing measures.

Western Health Advantage formally filed plans with the state to be a part of Covered California, the state’s online health exchange that will go live in 2014 as part of the federal health care reform bill, the Affordable Care Act. …

On the federal level, the Obama Administration last week issued a host of new rules and details on how insurers can structure benefits and premiums beginning in 2014. …

Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company announced the appointment of Travis Bethune to the position of vice president, distribution management and services leader. …

The political and legal challenges to federal health reform may finally be settled with the reelection of President Obama and the Supreme Court’s upholding of the Affordable Care Act, but, even with that seeming sense of finality, a host of challenges lay ahead for all levels of the industry.

Rick Heron is chief marketing and brand officer for Western Health Advantage, a Sacramento-based HMO that recently received approval to expand into Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties. The move into the North Bay for the nonprofit HMO is a significant development for a number of providers and brokers alike, who have said the injection of another health plan will offer more choice — and thus more competitive pricing, it is hoped — for the region’s employers and individuals. Mr. Heron has been with Western Health Advantage for seven years.

Now that Western Health Advantage formally announced its expansion into the North Bay, existing care providers said the arrival of a new health plan is an important step in providing choice for employers and consumers and will help those involved move toward a more integrated model of care.

It also caps off years of planning among the region’s hospitals and independent physicians, who collectively sought collaborations amid an increasingly competitive, consolidating health care landscape spurred by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

Western Health Advantage formally announced its plan to expand into the North Bay, adding Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties to its roster with hopes of offering a commercial health plan for employers and individuals by Jan. 1.

The Sacramento-based HMO in June only listed Sonoma and Marin counties for expansion, but it later included Napa County.

Sacramento-based HMO Western Health Advantage has filed for an expansion into Marin and Sonoma counties, where it hopes to partner with the Marin-Sonoma IPA and much of the region’s hospitals in offering a new health plan for employers and individuals.

Leave comments and take this week’s NBBJ Pulse Poll: How important to health care delivery and choice is the entrance into the North Bay of HMO health insurer Western Health Advantage?

Western Health Advantage has filed for an expansion of its business into Marin and Sonoma counties, where it hopes to partner with the Marin-Sonoma IPA and much of the region’s hospitals in offering a new health plan for employers and individuals

SONOMA COUNTY — Members of a regional effort to create a strong network of physicians across the North Bay are in early talks with a Sacramento-based health maintenance organization about forming an insurance product around the nearly 500-member physician network, with the possible goal of offering a commercial health plan to employers.