The Sacramento Bee reports that Vision Service Plan isn’t going anywhere. In fact, a favorable decision by a state agency Tuesday prompted the Rancho Cordova insurer to green-light a plan to add 400 jobs in the area. The state agreed to rewrite the rules governing California’s fledgling online insurance market, a crucial piece of President Barack Obama’s overhaul of the health care system.
The revision gives companies like VSP – which insure eye care only – much greater access to sell coverage in the online market. VSP and other eye-care insurers can now take aim at the full range of Californians who will buy coverage through the market, which begins operations in January 2014.
VSP, which employs 2,100 Sacramentans, had hinted it might leave the state. A slew of government and business leaders, led by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, urged the agency to change its mind. Read more here.