WHY ARE WE CONCERNED??

Most of the State and Public School Employees must sign up for Benefits in October of this year.  We are being forced to make choices for 2000 about our Flexible Medical Benefits Plan and our Health Insurance Plan when we have no information about the plan at all.
    All current choices for preferred provider networks are being eliminated with only 3 months notice and will be replaced with a single network which isn't even operational yet.  All doctors and providers in the current networks have not even been given the option to participate yet.  Several of us have contacted our current doctors in Memphis and learned these doctors have not yet received any forms giving them the option to participate in the new network.  Some of us have also contacted doctors in north Mississippi and learned that they are as disturbed as we are concerning the new plan.  Many, if not most, do not currently intend to participate in the network.  For many of us, this will mean inadequate health care.  Physicians who have treated us for years and have cared for us well will not be available in the new network.  We will be forced to pay higher deductibles, a greater share in co-payments, and the differences between customarily charged prices in this region and the amount AHS and state administrators unilaterally choose to declare eligible for health services.  In many cases we may no longer be able to afford badly needed specialists and are faced with the very real prospect of inadequate health care, especially in north Mississippi.  We are being forced to make decisions on the amount of money we will have to contribute to our medical spending accounts without adequate information on what our costs will be since we cannot determine who will or won't be in the network.
    The net result of these changes appears to be that we will have a very small number of physicians who are available on the AHS State Network.  So, as a result of the limited number of health care providers that will be available through the AHS State Network, many State and Public School Employees will have to go to non network doctors.  Which essentially results in a large number of participants being forced to pay the higher non network deductible of $600 and receive reduced benefits.
     And now we are being told that we will have to pay an additional $50 deductible for prescription medication!!  This is above and beyond all the other increases and the plan participants won't be officially notified until we receive the November 1999 Plan Update Newsletter.

It is November 18, 1999 and I still haven't received a copy yet - AMK.