UltraLink Ready With Online Health-Plan Purchasing

Idec Pharmaceuticals to Build Billion-Dollar Oceanside Facility

UltraLink, Costa Mesa, an iBenefits company, is hoping to expand an Internet-based group health insurance purchasing program it developed beyond a just-completed test with American Airlines. UltraLink officials claim the pilot e-commerce exchange helped American Airlines save 2.2% on its HMO premiums in California and Texas.

Santa Ana-based PacifiCare Health Systems Inc., Kaiser Permanente, Health Net and Maxicare were among the HMOs that participated in the exchange. It worked like this: A Web site was created for participating HMOs to go to to download bid documents, complete required information and upload the documents back through the site for consideration by American Airlines’ benefits administrators.

UltraLink’s site also allowed the HMOs to see their bids’ rankings against those of other firms and change their bid proposals at the last minute. Bid dollar amounts were not posted, but the plans’ respective rankings were posted. UltraLink said participating carriers could,and did,change their bids up until the exchange was completed.

“The UltraLink product clearly merges technology with human interaction,” said Gayla Coffelt, American Airlines’ benefit plans manager, in a news release. Coffelt said her company was comfortable with UltraLink’s approach to the negotiation and bidding process.

“Procurement is laborious and lengthy. It takes about seven to eight months. (With this), you can shrink the time to four months. You bring efficiencies to the process,” said Mike Rivera, an UltraLink vice president, adding that getting away from a paper-based system could help employers reduce health premiums.

Several national benefit studies have forecast HMOs’ premiums to increase by double digits, primarily because of higher pharmaceutical and technology costs.

“Employers are desperate to reduce their premiums,” Rivera said.

Some observers have said that technology could reduce the role of brokers in the health-insurance distribution system. Rivera, however, said that UltraLink’s product would “absolutely (have a) role for the broker. The broker can utilize it as a distributor.”

UltraLink has been based in Costa Mesa for around 10 years. It just completed a merger with iBenefits Inc., an El Segundo-based application service provider to the employee benefits industry that offers Web-based enrollment and administration tools to mid-size and large employers, benefits brokers, third-party administrators and insurance carriers.

Idec Adds Research Site

Idec Pharmaceuticals Corp., La Jolla, is building a $1.3 billion, campus-style drug manufacturing and research center in Oceanside. The Oceanside City Council voted this month to approve an incentive package to persuade the publicly traded company to build its center on a 60-acre site in the Ocean Ranch Corporate Centre, a project of Stirling Development of Irvine.

Documents from Oceanside’s Economic Development Department show Idec’s facility is projected to provide up to 2,427 manufacturing and R