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A Cigna spokesman said Thursday that the insurance company “works hard to keep plans affordable for our customers, and we have made a good faith effort to do so here. Kettering Health Network wants our customers to pay more and have demanded rate increases that our analysis shows would further increase costs for our customers.”
Contracts between insurance companies and health systems include agreements to cap prices at negotiated discounts for services to patients with those insurance plans.
If a hospital and insurance company fail to reach an in-network deal, Kettering Health providers will be out of network for Cigna plans.
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Kettering Health has a large network of physician practices as well as eight hospitals, including its flagship, Kettering Medical Center.
It is not clear how many local residents could be impacted if a resolution is not reached.
Allan Baumgarten, a consultant and author of the Ohio Health Market Review, which analyzes the insurance market in the state, said most of Cigna’s business in Ohio is administering benefit plans for employers who pay for their own health insurance benefits, which included about 771,000 lives state wide in 2017. The insurer also covered about 13,000 people in large-group plans as of 2017.
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