On May 10, Enrollment Maintenance and Billing (EM&B) begin the final phase of migration of group accounts to paperless billing.  Group Benefit Administrators (BAs) will receive a second and final notification letter and email, if available, that their BCBSF invoices will be available online for viewing and payment through View and Pay Invoice (VPI), and they will no longer receive paper invoices in the mail effective with their June 2010 invoice. 

Opting Out

Should a BA insist on opting out of paperless invoices, Service Advocates will be prepared to walk the BAs through a process to help answer any questions or concerns about going paperless. 

We ask for your help in encouraging groups to adopt paperless billing and to register for BlueBiz. The self-service tools and capabilities will make it easier for BAs to manage their group’s insurance benefits, and VPI gives them the ability to track, monitor and generate reports for their health care premiums.  In addition, by providing an email address through BlueBiz, BAs can receive future communications from BCBSF via email.

It is critical that the Benefit Administrator respond to this mailing, as we will shut off paper invoices for groups regardless of their BlueBiz deployed status. Any groups that previously opted out of paperless invoicing is not part of this effort.    

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), as amended on March 2, 2010 by the Temporary Extension Act of 2010, provides for premium reductions for health benefits under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, commonly called COBRA. Eligible individuals pay only 35 percent of their COBRA premiums and the remaining 65 percent is reimbursed to the coverage provider through a tax credit. To qualify, individuals must experience a COBRA qualifying event that is the involuntary termination of a covered employee's employment. The involuntary termination must generally occur during the period that began September 1, 2008 and ends on March 31, 2010. (An involuntary termination of employment that occurs on or after March 2, 2010 but by March 31, 2010 and follows a qualifying event that was a reduction of hours that occurred at any time from September 1, 2008 through March 31, 2010 is also a qualifying event for purposes of ARRA.) The premium reduction applies to periods of health coverage that began on or after February 17, 2009 and lasts for up to 15 months. See Temporary Extension Act of 2010.