Blue Shield of California Seeks to Serve More CalPERS Members in 2022 With Expansion of its Services into 13 California Counties

Blue Shield of California is expanding its health benefits plan offerings for CalPERS members into 13 California counties in 2022 and CalPERS retirees will benefit from a new Medicare Advantage PPO plan that will be available nationwide next year.

Blue Shield's Access+ will be expanded to offer CalPERS members coverage in the following Bay Area counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Sonoma, and Solano.

Blue Shield will expand its CalPERS Exclusive Provider Organization (EPO) into Lassen and Shasta counties, and, like an HMO plan, the EPO provides low fixed copayments with no coinsurance or deductibles.

Blue Shield's innovative and low-cost Trio Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) plan will also expand into Santa Cruz, Stanislaus and Orange counties.

Added to this good news about Blue Shield's expanded offerings are the competitive rate increases with these products. Blue Shield 2021 to 2022 premium changes are among the lowest offered in the CalPERS program. The premiums for Blue Shield's Access+ HMO and EPO are each decreasing by 4.13% in 2022 and the Trio premium will increase by just 2.79% for 2022.

'We are excited to be able to expand our geographic footprint so that we can offer our Access+ and Trio products to more CalPERS members while maintaining very competitive 2022 premiums for our existing and new CalPERS members,' said Dan Prettyman, Vice President of Blue Shield's Select Markets team that supports CalPERS and its members. 'It is important that we continue to manage and control premium cost increases for all Blue Shield of California members and our 2022 CalPERS health plan premiums are a great example of doing just that.'

In addition to expanding the CalPERS products' geographic footprint, Blue Shield is also introducing a new Medicare Advantage PPO offering, which will be available to CalPERS members in all 58 California counties and nationwide. Benefits of the plan include:

• $0 copay for most services;
• quarterly $80 over-the-counter drug benefit;
• personal emergency response system;
• post-discharge meals; and
• 24 non-emergency medical transportation one-way trips available to and from home.

'We are delighted to once again offer a Blue Shield solution to CalPERS Medicare members and we look forward to welcoming both previous Blue Shield Medicare members and new Medicare members to our plan,' Dan said.

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