URBANA -- Humana has joined Health Alliance Medical Plans in filing protests with the state of Illinois on plans to award new insurance contracts for state employees and retirees.

Insurance vendors have until noon today to file protests, according to the state's Chief Procurement Officer Matt Brown.

State employees and retirees are set to begin enrolling in new health plans May 1, but whether an evaluation of the protests and a decision from the Executive Ethics Commission will be done in time for final contracts to be awarded before then is hard to tell. The process can take days or weeks, Brown said.

"It is a priority for our office," he added. "However, we won't compromise the review."

Humana, which covers about 15,000 state employee and retiree members under an HMO, filed protests Tuesday on both the state's HMO and open access plan contract awards, company spokeswoman Lindsey Minella said.

Health Alliance, which covers nearly 100,000 state employees and retirees in an HMO plan and initially filed a protest Sunday on HMO proposed contracts, has since also filed a protest of proposed open access contract awards, company spokeswoman Jane Hayes said.

The state has proposed awarding two separate HMO contracts to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois and two open-access plan contracts to HealthLink and PersonalCare a move Health Alliance contends will force its state employee and retiree members to switch to more expensive coverage to keep access to their current doctors.

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield HMOs apparently won't be options for East Central Illinois state employees or retirees because the company doesn't have medical provider networks established in those counties.

Hayes said Health Alliance officials decided to protest the proposed open access contracts in addition to the HMO contracts after learning Monday that the requests for proposals submitted by insurers were scored differently for HMOs and open access plans.

On HMO plans, she said, 70 percent of the state's consideration was pricing and 30 percent of the consideration was quality, provider network and other non-pricing factors.

On open access plans, she said, it was the other way around: Just 28 percent of the consideration was pricing and the rest of the consideration went to quality and other factors.

Yet, Hayes said, the two selected open access plans which are structured with three different service level tiers and out-of-pocket costs for each will include HMOs on their first tiers.

"These are all considered managed care plans, so one would think the evaluation would be the same," she said.

Health Alliance officials say they have looked at costs for their members who would be forced to change to the second tier of an open access plan, and found a family of four with typical health care costs in a year, including one hospital stay, one emergency room visit, nine primary care visits, three lab and X-ray service charges, three preventive health visits and one specialist visit would pay 222 percent more.

For those services, out-of-pocket costs under a Health Alliance HMO would run $730, and under the second tier of an open-access plan, including the higher premium, out-of-pocket costs would run $2,351, according to Health Alliance Chief Financial Officer Gordon Salm.

The largest increase the company found in comparison was 309 percent more for a $10,000 hospital stay under the second tier of an open access plan and up to 135 percent more for an emergency room visit, Salm said.

Hayes said support for insurance contract protests has been growing downstate and talks with legislators are continuing.

"We're talking to them about the fairness of about 137,000 members in downstate HMOs, including Health Alliance, PersonalCare and Humana, that would be forced to change health plans, that would be forced to pay more to keep their doctors," Hayes said. "Nothing changes for Chicago employees. They have the same offerings they had before. So our members are questioning, and so are legislators, why are you treating downstate people differently?"