Health Insurance Blog

J.D. Power and Associates rating of the top health plans for the South East Central region lists two health plans tied for the top spot for 2009 - Anthem Blue Cross Blue shield of Kentucky and BlueCross BlueShield of Alabama.

CIGNA & Humana finished close behind while still receiving designation as being among the nations best.

Aetna & Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee were rated as “about average” while  United HealthCare and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi were rated below average.

According to J.D. Power and Associates, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan was the top rated California health plan based on their 2009 survey.

Based on their survey and analysis of more than 130 health plans nationally (broken up into 17 distinct regions), Kasier Foundation Health plan was the tops in the California region and among the best nationally.

The other health plans from California that were surveyed all performed below average.  They included:  Blue Cross of California, Blue Shield of California, Aetna, HealthNet, Pacificare, and CIGNA.

More information about the J.D. Power 2009 Health Plan Ratings.

More information about California health insurance.

The top North Carolina health insurance plans as ranked by US News and World report’s annual health plan ranking report are displayed below.  Of particular note is that a number of health insurers including the states oldest and largest health insurance company, BCBSNC, have chosen to not supply internal data that is required to provide accurate health plan rankings.  As a result, BCBSNC, as well other North Carolina health plans were not included in the 2008 rankings.

The top North Carolina health plans that particiapted in this report are

1. CIGNA Healthcare of North Carolina
2. Aetna Health of the Carolinas
3. UnitedHealthcare of North Carolina

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.