Information relating to BCBS Litigation Settlement and Virginia United Methodist Pensions, Inc. Health Plan Coverage
Current or former enrollees in the Virginia Conference-sponsored health plans with Anthem may have received a notice from notice@bcbssettlement.com with the subject: ”Blue Cross Blue Shield Settlement – Claim Notice” in 2025.
Anthem and other individual Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans have entered into a settlement agreement. Potential claimants were contacted and were given the option to Opt-In to the settlement agreement in 2021-2022. The notice email sent in early 2025 is to provide claimants who previously opted in with the opportunity to review and potentially dispute the calculations by year, 2018-2020, that will be used as the basis for settlement amounts.
The Conference-sponsored health plans are Self Insured. Amounts calculated as part of the settlement are Total Administrative Fees Paid, which represent a small portion of the total cost of coverage. Contributions paid by health plan members include a share of administrative fees and expected claims costs, but only the administrative fees are used to calculated settlement amounts. Administrative fees are also called Administrative Services Only (ASO) fees.
The settlement agreement prescribes a default cost allocation method. The amounts shown for each individual self-insured (ASO) claimant represent 18% of actual administrative fees if they were covered as a single employee and 25% of actual administrative fees if they were covered as part of family coverage.
In order to dispute the default cost allocation method, a claimant must provide documentation that they paid more than 18% or 25% of costs for their respective coverage type. For the period of 2018, 2019, and 2020, the actual contributions for Active Clergy were less than these percentages. Therefore, there should be no reason to dispute the amounts shown in your claimant account unless you are not given credit for a period of time that you were enrolled in the Conference health plans.
Additional information including the calculations described above can be found at https://www.bcbssettlement.com/ and the Proposed Plan of Distribution document.