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Uniform Medical Plan going away? No, but change coming

• Published October 28, 2008

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Got an email from a reader asking me to check into a rumor that the Uniform Medical Plan,, the most popular health insurance plan for state workers, was being eliminated.

I just happened to be talking to Dave Wasser at the Health Care Authority about enrollment for next year and asked him if something was afoot. He said UMP is not going anywhere, but the state is looking to transfer management of the super-affordable PPO to a private company in 2010.

"Parts of UMP are already done through a third-party administrator. We're looking at expanding that role," he said. "There aren't too many entities like the state of Washington that are running their own preferred providers organizations any more."

Switching would allow plan subscribers more education and disease management help, Wasser added. The idea is to solicit proposals next year. We’ll come back to this.