Health Insurance Companies

Insure Lane offers the major health carrier outlines below to help consumers find the answers they need so that they'll be able to make the most well-informed health insurance choices possible. The nation's major indemnity carriers are.

Anthem Foundation

The Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation Inc. is an Indiana-based privately held corporate Foundation that provides health and medical care benefits to more than 11.8 million members through its various subsidiary companies. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield works was established in 2000 to help manage and improve the health and enrich the greater communities of those living in Anthem BCBS communities. Supported by Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield associates, Anthem is currently the fourth largest publicly traded health care benefits corporation in the U.S. as well as being the Blue Cross Blue Shield licensed entity for Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, Nevada and Virginia, not including the suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C.

To achieve its strategic objective of being among the best and biggest health care carrier on its "block" possessed with both the dimension and range of influence to deliver the best health insurance values with the best people, the Anthem foundation offers a wide selection of flexible and competitively priced health plan opportunities. The Anthem health insurance products portfolio includes a diversified assortment of medical benefit offerings ranging from HMOs to POS or Point of Service Plans to PPOs to a variety of traditional healthcare indemnity products as well as selection of specialized health products, such as group life, dental, prescription management, vision and behavioral health. Additionally, Anthem BCBS supplies an extensive range of managed care and administrative services and "partially insured" health plan products for employer funded benefit plans.

CIGNA HealthCare

The CIGNA HealthCare Corporation is an investor-owned employee group benefits organization headquartered in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Through its various operating subsidiaries CIGNA HealthCare or CIGNA is a major national provider of medical benefits through workplace-sponsored employee managed care and indemnity health plans, including a variety of health care products and services ranging from group life, accident and disability coverage to dental benefits and behavioral health coverage as well as retirement products and services, and pharmacy benefits and investment management.

CIGNA HealthCare's major subsidiary is The Connecticut General Life Insurance Co. The CIGNA Corporation operates in five business segments: run-off reinsurance operations and additional operations, employee retirement benefit plans and investment services, international life, health and employee benefit plans and employee health care, life and disability benefits.

Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente is currently the largest non-profit health care organization operating within the United States, serving approximately 8.2 million members in the states of Colorado, California, Georgia, Maryland, Hawaii, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, Virginia and the District of Columbia. They are an "integrated health delivery system," meaning that Kaiser Permanente organizes, coordinates and provides for the entire scope of care for their members, including:

• preventive health care
• well-baby and prenatal health care
• immunizations and inoculations
• emergency medical services care
• health screening and diagnostics
• hospital stay and specialized medical services
• pharmacy related services

Their plan participant s are encouraged to choose both a personal care physician as well as a pediatrician for their children's health care needs. Members are 100% free to change physician at any time. Their primary care physicians coordinate their health care alongside specialists, arrange diagnostic tests, prescribe medicines and or therapies, and arranges for any necessary hospitalization. Permanente physicians are not required to obtain outside authorization before directing members to the above services.

UNICARE Life and Health Insurance Company

Back in 1995, UNICARE became the brand name for the majority of the WellPoint Health Networks concerns operating outside the state of California. UNICARE provides managed care in addition to specialty healthcare coverage throughout the United States wholly dedicated to the delivery of quality healthcare products, plans and benefits working in conjunction with its brokers, consultants, customers, employers and providers. UNICARE Life & Health is an operating affiliate of WellPoint Health Networks, one of our nation's largest publicly-traded health care companies and as such offers its members a comprehensive range of open access health care plans along with specialty health care products designed to preserve participant's choice at competitive prices. UNICARE currently services the health benefits needs of 6.9 million medical as well as over 29.7 million specialty health products members.

UNICARE's approach is to offer consumers a diversified assortment of more or less traditional managed care products while remaining focused on the development of new hybrid care plans capable of taking advantage of the most beneficial characteristics of both traditional managed care and traditional open access health plan structures. The company offers a continuum of managed health care plan options that provide consumers with incentives to buy into more tightly managed health care plans. UniCare operates under the philosophy that if it is better able to predict health care needs it will be better able to control health care costs and provide their members with greater choice.

United Healthcare

United Healthcare works to coordinate health and well-being benefit programs on behalf of locally-based employers and consumers nationwide. United's health benefits products are marketed primarily to small and medium-sized businesses with up to five-thousand employees. With its risk-based health plan product offerings, United Healthcare assumes the responsibility for of both the medical and administrative costs for its participant members in return for a monthly premiums-typically at fixed annual rates. United Healthcare additionally provides administrative as well as other management services for customers who self-insure the health and medical costs of their employees and their employee's dependents, for which service United Healthcare receives a fee. As of December 31, 2002, United Healthcare was responsible for servicing approximately 7.8 million individual's health care needs.

WellPoint Health Networks

Formed back in 1992 to administer Blue Cross of California's managed care programs. Blue Cross of California and WellPoint merged into a single stockholder-owned company, WellPoint Health Networks Inc in 1996. Today, one in ten Americans are currently receiving benefits and coverage for their medical care needs through a WellPoint health plan. WellPoint has created and operates a variety of HMO's and PPO's as well as various specialty and hybrid network-based health care and dental services designed to combine the attributes and plan benefits that consumers look for with efficient cost control techniques and measures. Employer sponsored groups as well as individual plan members are free to select from both basic and comprehensive plans in order to meet their specific health care needs. WellPoint also administers a wide variety of related specialty health care products and services ranging from flexible spending accounts to COBRA administration.

They are the leading health indemnity plan carrier in the United States, responsible for administering the benefits of approximately twenty-eight-million medical members as well as approximately 46 million specialty members nationwide.

Health Net Inc.

Located in Woodland Hills, California, Health Net, Inc. is one of the United State's largest publicly -traded managed health care indemnity carriers. The company's insured PPO, HMO, and government contracted subsidiaries provide health care benefits in fifteen states through individual, group, Medicaid, Medicare and TRICARE programs. It operates under the stated goal of helping its members to stay healthy, comfortable and secure. Health Net subsidiaries offer a range of managed health care products ranging from behavioral health to dental and vision to prescription drugs as well as offering managed health care products coordination for multi-region group plan employers and managerial services for self-funded benefits programs and medical groups. The company currently employs more than nine-thousand associates nationwide.

Health Net Inc. works to promote a health benefits provider to health benefits recipient environment that is both collaborative and team-oriented; not only by offering a highly competitive health insurance package; but by encouraging a healthy work and life balance as well.

PacifiCare Health Systems

Celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary as one of the United State's premiere consumer health care indemnity organizations, the PacifiCare Health System currently services the care needs of more than three million health plan members in addition to approximately nine million specialty health plan members nationwide. Its annual revenues top more than eleven billion. PacifiCare offers employers, individuals and Medicare beneficiaries a wide variety of consumer-driven health care and medical insurance products. Its specialty health benefits operations include dental and vision, behavioral health, whole and term life insurance, and a complete pharmacy and medical management program administered through their wholly owned and operated subsidiary, Prescription Solutions. PacifiCare Health System's stated mission is to continue to develop and maintain its position as a leading consumer health care organization totally committed to making its members lives healthier and more secure.