Blue Shield of California
Blue Shield of California will be implementing a new online payment system for their individual and family plan members in 2018. Consumers with off-exchange health plans, those bought directly from Blue Shield and not from Covered California will be transitioned to the new billing system in March 2018. On-exchange plan member, those who enrolled through Covered California, will be transitioned in May.
New Blue Shield Payment System To Reduce Problems
The new billing system addresses many issues and complaints that have frustrated both consumers and Blue Shield for several years. The grandfathered members were moved to the new billing system in 2017. Beginning in February, Blue Shield will begin to notify off-exchange members in individual and family plans of the change. On March 10th and 11th Blue Shield will begin to transition the off-exchange members into the new billing system off-exchange.
Off-exchange plan members should enroll in the Easy$Pay automatic billing system before March 9th to avoid any disruption to their monthly premium payments.
On-exchange members will transition to the new system in May 2018.
Starting March 12th, members who use pay through their online banking application must delete and then re-add Blue Shield of California to your list of payees using the Account Number from your bill. This must be done by April 1. Detailed instructions for the identifying and entering the account number (which is a combination of two different numbers) can be found in the Blue Shield Billing Instructions FAQs below.
Multiple Policies Each Need Separate Billing Update
If consumers have multiple policies (medical, dental, vision) they will need to re-enroll with the Easy$Pay system separately for each policy they have.
Blue Shield IFP members will still have the option to log into their accounts and make monthly payments online. Members can still call member services and make a payment over the phone.
Blue Shield will still accept payments by mail, but there will be a new billing address attached to tear-off portion of the invoice.
During the transition the Blue Shield payment center will be shut down on March 10th and 11th. Payments cannot be processed during the shut-down period.
What happens if members of my household are on different medical plans?
If you have members of your household who are on different medical plans, you will begin to receive separate bills for each individual starting with your April bill. This means you must make separate payments for your April bill for each member of your household who is on a different medical plan.
For example, if you pay your bill with a check, you need to mail separate checks for each member of your household who is on a different medical plan.
If you use our automatic payment system (Easy$Pay), you must establish a separate Blue Shield web account for each bill. Then, within each account, you will need to sign up for automatic payments.
What happens if I have multiple separate accounts and Subscriber IDs?
If you purchased Dental and/or Vision and/or Medical plans at separate times, you will need to log in to each separate account to update your payment information. For example, if Vision, Dental and Medical were purchased in the same transaction at the same time, you will only have one Subscriber ID/Account to update the payment information. But if Vision, Dental and Medical were purchased in three separate transactions at different times, you will need to log in to three separate accounts (separate Subscriber IDs) to update the payment information for all accounts.
Note: If you purchased Medical Insurance through Covered California, you will be updating the payment information later in 2018.