ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 24, 1996 TAG: 9604240047
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHEAN STAFF WRITER
With its plan for converting to a stockholder-owned company pending before state regulators, Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield has prepared for a much larger turnout of policyholders at its annual meeting today in Richmond.
Trigon, the largest health-care insurer in Virginia, has put together information packages for more than 325 policyholders, a Trigon spokeswoman said. In past years, annual meetings have attracted fewer than a dozen people, Brooke Taylor, the spokeswoman, said.
Norwood H. Davis Jr., Trigon's chairman and chief executive officer, is scheduled to talk about the insurer's future, including its planned conversion to a public stock company owned by shareholders.
Earlier this year, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation allowing Trigon to change from a mutual association to a public company.
However, the proposed change still must be approved by Trigon's policyholders and by the State Corporation Commission, the regulatory body that oversees insurance, banking, securities, utility and other activities in Virginia. The corporation commission is expected to hold hearings on the plan this summer.
Trigon, which provides health-care coverage to 1.8 million customers, has 16,000 group policyholders and 185,000 individual policyholders, most of them in Virginia.
While preparing for conversion to a public company, Trigon came under fire in 1994 from consumer advocacy groups and others for secretly collecting a discount from health-care providers but not passing along those savings to policyholders. Under pressure from Virginia's insurance regulators, Trigon agreed to issue refunds to policyholders.
In its first round of those rebates, the organization returned $23 million to 133,000 customers who submitted claims. Another $30.85 million was distributed to 295,250 customers whose names and addresses were on file with Trigon but who had not submitted claims.
When Virginia's Bureau of Insurance and attorney general raised questions about Trigon's efforts to reach everyone who might have been owed a refund, the program was reopened last November.
Any of the $20 million that Trigon earmarked for the latest refund program that isn't distributed by year end will be turned over to the state treasury as unclaimed property, said Taylor, the Trigon spokeswoman.
The deadline for current and past customers to apply for a refund is May 1. Customers can obtain the necessary application by calling a toll-free number: (800) 313-6224.
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