Legal questionnaire ?

[Guest Anna]

Our HMO and PPO carrier is Trigon/Blue Cross-Blue Shield in Virginia. Today, I receive a questionnaire with the request to sent the latest Payroll Tax Return to them, marking employees in their plan, full time, part time and temp employees, as well as those employees not in the plan, are they Champus, are they on their spouses' policy, Medicaid, Medicare, etc. I don't think it is any of their business. Trigon is not Government (Fed or State) run, how can they request a payroll tax return, we don't even ask our employees if they are married, how

can they ?

Would appreciate some insights ....

Thank you,

Anna

[Larry M]

[i am an actuary, not an attorney.]

I can not comment on the legaality of the request as it may concern otherwise confidential information, BUT, my guess is Trigon is doing this (as do many other carriers) to most small groups in order to determine whether the group is covering only those persons who are entitled to be covered and is covering the correct percentage of those employees.

You may be able to satisfy both the carrier's needs and your employees' confidentiality by deleting certain aspects of the payroll tax form.

[Guest Anna]

Larry, thank you for your

comments. I have forwarded

my concerns to our insurance

agent as well.