Health Insurance Blog

US News and World Report’s 2008 ranking of the top Illinois Health Insurance Plans are listed below.  Based on 1) consumer surveys and 2) success in preventing and treating illness compared with average plan.

1. PersonalCare Insurance of Illinois (conducting business exclusively in Illinois)
2. Health Alliance Medical Plans (Illinois, Iowa)
3. CIGNA Healthcare of St. Louis (Illinois, Missouri)
4. Medical Associates Health Plan (Illinois, Iowa)
5. United Healthcare plan of the River Valley (Illinois, Tennessee, Iowa, Virginia
6. OSF Health Plans (Illinois)
7. United Healthcare of the Midwest (Illinois, Kansas, Missouri)
8. United Healthcare of the Midlands (Illinois, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa)
9. CIGNA Healthcare of Illinois (Illinois, Indiana)
10. United Healthcare of Illinois (Illinois, Indiana)

You’ll notice, on this top 10 list, there are 4 distinct United Healthcare plans listed as well as 2 CIGNA health plans.  This generally results from various regional health plans being responsible for a service area that covers specific MSAs, or specific regions within a state or states.

Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna are noticably absent from this list

CIGNA last week launched a facebook page that includes online courses, games, tools, calculators and podcasts designed to help people make better health care decisions.  In addition, CIGNA is offering rewards for every three questions that are correctly answered by visitors.   The reward is in the form of donations of clean water to children in India.  Since the program launched last week, more than 25,000 days worth of clean water has been donated.

The page also contains interactive charts that helps people understand the health care reform proposals from presidential candidates, and how they might affect families and individuals.

Similar online educational tools have been launched by other health insurance companies such as Aetna, but as far as we know, this is the first to utilize Facebook in this manner.

CIGNA has announced they will offer their Medicare Advantage products to an additional 15 states in an effort to grow its business by targeting the senior market (age 65+).   In addition to growing their state footprint substantially from 13 states to 28 states, the senior health plans will expand their coverage within the states in which they already do business, covering more counties.   Some of the larger states that will be added to CIGNAs new Medicare Advantage service area inlcude California, Ohio, Florida, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

Medicare Advantage plans include Medicare HMOs, PPOs, Private Fee-For-Service Plans and Medicare Special Needs Plans.

For additional resources about Medicare Advantage plans, and other Medicare options, you can visit http://www.medicare.gov/choices/advantage.asp.