 Personal finance, PowerPoint, presentation, insurance companies, prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Remember that insurance planning is part of our long-term risk mitigation strategy where we use the adage of measure twice, cut once, putting a formal process in place, looking something like we're going to set our goals, develop a plan to reach those goals, put your plan into action, review the result, and then repeat the process periodically. Most of this information can be found at Investopedia Best Health Insurance Companies, which you can find online. Take a look at the references, resources, continue your research from there. This is by Rani Sandroff, updated May 7th, 2022. In prior presentations, we've been talking about insurance in general, focusing in on the health insurance specifically here, noting health insurance can be more complex than other types of insurance due to, in part, the complexity of the health industry itself and the massive amounts of regulation for the health industry and the insurance related to it. We talked about different kinds of plans in prior presentations in a more kind of abstract way, different terminology like deductibles and copay and so on. And now you might be saying, well, where can I go? What kind of companies should I be looking at and possibly get down to the business of comparing and contrasting different companies? That's what we'll talk about now. Note that we are not affiliated with any of these companies or getting any commission from any of the companies or anything like that, but Investopedia might have some affiliation with these companies. So these are just in accordance with Investopedia to get an idea of some companies that you might be doing for some comparing and contrasting. You of course then might want to go to the Investopedia website, do some more research, look at the references resources and or go to these actual company websites and continue your research from there as well, do your own research. So best health insurance companies, which are the best health insurance companies in the United States? It's hard to know how to look how to even begin sorting through the multiple options when your employer offers a choice of health plans or you need to select a private health insurance company. As we've seen, it can be quite overwhelming if you've been following along with all the information with regards to the insurance due to the added level of complexity with the laws and regulations related to it. So we've done some of the legwork for you by examining which health insurance companies in the U.S. are ranked highest on such factors as prevention, treatment and customer satisfaction. We selected nine companies with a wide range of available products, including national providers and a few high rated regional companies. So to find the best policies for you and your family, you can enter your zip code and other information at the company's website. So these are places that they're recommending in terms of big name, you know, health care companies that you might start by going there and checking it out. Remember that you could also think about first, you might first think about when you're looking at health care, go into your actual employer and see what options they offer there. And you could have a range of options depending on the employer that you can dive into. And then if you can't get the health care through the employer and or you want to look at other options, expanding your options, you could look at the marketplace, which is driven kind of by like the Affordable Care Act, the ACA, which you might have a state marketplace and you might have some states have their own marketplace and you might then have the Fed marketplace. And if your income is below a certain threshold, you might have the ability to then look at subsidies that could be possibly available through possibly like tax credits and other resources in that area. If your income's above a certain threshold and or you're, you want a broader range of research, then you might be looking at big companies. You might start to look at the companies themselves, go to their websites and say, this is a big brand name company. Let's look at, you know, what they offer here and see if I could do comparisons that way between company to company. So the comparisons you might be doing is one, can I get the company, can I get it through my employer because they might have a group plan or something like that? And then you might look at the marketplace where primarily you might be thinking if I go to the marketplace, there'll be more standard kind of plans. I can look at the models there and or I might be trying to get a credit if my income is below a certain threshold. And then you might be widening the search and thinking about different companies. So you want to narrow down the search in terms of what kind of plan you're looking for, whether you can get a credit and then also then narrow down the search in terms of what companies are offering the plans, which companies have the best ratings in terms of your trust of their services. Okay. So you will be directed to the policies available in your area that are appropriate for circumstances at which point you can compare local physicians, hospital and pharmacy choices. You can also find the combination of premium, deductible and other out-of-pocket expenses that is the best option for you. So we've talked about these are quite confusing, more confusing than often other times types of insurance like a property insurance type of thing, because you've got the premiums, deductibles and the out-of-pocket and the maximum cost and whatnot. These terms are over and above or more complex oftentimes than other types of insurance. So you might want to go in and get some get some information on them specifically. So they say the best health insurance companies best for Medicare Advantage. So for Medicare Advantage specifically, they're saying Etna, and this is according to Investopedia, best for the nationwide coverage, nationwide, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, best for global coverage. They're saying Cigna for the global coverage, best for umbrella coverage, Humana, best for HMOs, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. So it got specifically the HMO and we've talked about the HMOs versus the PPOs. So again, you might try to narrow down by whether or not you're going HMO or PPO or some kind of hybrid between the two. Once you do that, if you say, OK, I think the HMO is the way I would want to go, because possibly it has lower premiums than others, then you might be thinking what kind of company is specific for that particular area, as with these other kind of things in terms of what kind of company would be best for global coverage, what kind of countries would be best for the nationwide coverage and so forth. So best for the TechSavvy United Health Care, best for the Midwest Health Partners, best for New England Harvard Pilgrim, best for New York Capital District Physicians Health Plan. So we'll go through just a couple of these now. So these are the list. So if any of these best fours kind of ring true for you, then you might want to go to the Investopedia website, best health insurance company by Ronnie Sandroff and possibly then go to these particular company websites and do a little bit more research there. We'll just go through a couple of them just to give an idea of the pros and cons according to Investopedia. So we've got ETNA and Impressive 36 ETNA Medicare Advantage Plans sold in 30 states plus the District of Cumbulumbia receive top NCQA rating 4.0 or greater in 2021 with Connecticut and Maine being standouts. In 2020, ETNA Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug Plans were made available in 264 new countries across the country providing millions with Medicare beneficiaries access to an ETNA plan. The insurer also sells Medicare supplement plans that's the Medigap in all 50 states. In addition to these, they also offer a combination of dental vision and hearing supplemental Medicare product in many states. So in private arena, in the private arena, ETNA is a large provider of employer-based health insurance, a total of five ETNA plans serving Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Rhode Island made the top NCQA ranks in 2021 and the 2021 JD Power U.S. Commercial Health Plan Study ranked ETNA plans second highest in Ohio, Maryland and Virginia. In addition, ETNA's pricing seems to be lower than many competitors' pricing. So you can do that once you get kind of an idea of what kind of policy you're looking for, then you can do the comparison pricing of course between companies for similar types of policies. So in November and for different states and so on. So in November 2018, ETNA became part of the CVS health company and synergies between the two are beginning to emerge. So they've got some kind of merger going there. Synergies is a term for saying that they're gonna, the combination of the two is gonna create something greater than the whole one plus one equals five synergy happening. So for example, ETNA medical plan subscribers with high blood pressure can get a free home monitor at CVS. So chronic disease monitoring may also be available at CVS stores. So that could be kind of neat that you got the CVS store that could be aligned with the medical provider. So now we got the Blue Cross, Blue Shield. One out of the three Americans has health coverage from Blue Cross, Blue Shield. So that's quite a lot of people. So the names on various state plans include Anthem, Care First, Highmark, Independence and Walmart, but the 34 independent and locally operated Blue Cross, Blue Shield companies open doors in all 50 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico. Nationwide, more than 1.7 million doctors and hospitals contract with Blue Cross, Blue Shield companies more than any other insurer according to the company. So if you're looking for the, you know, obviously a big company that is possibly well established or have a history of that that's covered a lot of people then Blue Cross seems to be a pretty large one. In 2021, 57 Blue Cross, Blue Shield company plans earned moderate to high ratings from the NCQA based on clinical quality and member satisfaction. In 2019, many Anthem plans, including some with lower overall ratings scored impressively in areas related to customer satisfaction. Blue Cross, Blue Shield offers, Blue Cross, Blue Shield offers employer insurance individual policies on healthcare.gov. So that's gonna be the marketplace area healthcare.gov and a variety of Medicare plans. Got the mid gap prescription drugs part D and Medicare Advantage. Then we've got SIGNA next up on the line up SIGNA. We won't go through all of them by the way just a couple more. This might be the last one. It's not surprising that a company that sells a product called Global Health Advantage would lead our list for international coverage. So if you're looking international coverage they're saying SIGNA is their top choice according to Investopedia. This global health service company has 17 million medical customers worldwide served by a global network of 1.5 million healthcare professionals with access to doctors in 200 plus countries. So that could be useful of course if you're gonna be in multiple areas and whatnot and you wanna have access to an in-network area possibly SIGNA would be a place to go there. So it has more than 70,000 employees. SIGNA's followed on the heels of Aetna and CVS Health in 2018 by partnering with Express Scripts the nation's largest pharmacy benefit manager and a deal aimed at lowering cost and improving care. And the US Six SIGNA plans received a four star rating in 2021. However, SIGNA was a top performer in customer satisfaction in Illinois and Indiana, Virginia, New Jersey and Ohio in the 2021 US Commercial Member Health Plan studied by JD Power. It was ranked among the worst in its industry for member satisfaction by the American Customer Satisfaction Index as the ACSI in 2020. So that's interesting. SIGNA sells medical plans in 12 states and dental plans in all 49 plus DC it sells individual plans on healthcare.gov. So that's the marketplace and the exchange. In other words, in 313 countries across 13 states SIGNA also expanded its Medicare Advantage plans in 2021 to reach a total of 477 counties across 26 states plus DC adding coverage in three new states for 2022. Let's take a look at one more here. This is going to be Humana Health Insurance policies don't usually cover such expenses as eyeglasses and contacts or dental exams, crowns and appliances. Those are appliances in your mouth, not like the refrigerator. I always thought that was a funny term, but in the case Humana a broad-based health and wellbeing company sells private policies in all these areas and the company has a range of plans for people living with chronic conditions that include transitions from a hospital stay to home care and meal delivery. So it sounds like Humana has some specialty kind of areas that might be, they might be better at than some other areas. And if those are applicable to you might be a place for comparison. Humana is also among the companies that offer special needs policies for people with a severe or disabling chronic condition or living in a long-term care facility. So against kind of a specialty kind of area it seems there that they might be better at than others. So as of 2018, Humana no longer offers individual medical plans but focuses on healthcare solutions for employers and offers Medicare plans. 24 Humana plans receive a four-star or better rating from the NCQA in 2021. Humana led the pack for customer satisfaction among health insurers in 2020, according to data from the ACSI survey. Humana's policies for HMOs are relatively affordable. I know I said Humana was the last one but we've got one more here, a bonus one. This is the last one for sure. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. The non-profit insurer Kaiser Foundation Health Plan incorporated part of Kaiser Permanente won stellar ratings for private insurance with one plan Mid-Atlantic States getting a top overall NCQA score of 5.0 and seven other plans ranging from Georgia to California winning 4.0 to 4.5 ratings. In the Medicare Advantage Arena Kaiser was also a winner with eight plans in the very top echelons. The company operates in eight states, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington, DC. So all of Kaiser's highly rated private and Medicare Advantage plans are HMOs. So we're talking remember when you're thinking about the plan types if you're thinking I'm gonna try to bring things down to an HMO type of plan I think that's gonna be relevant then you might search different companies based on what their specialty is we're talking HMOs here. So except for one plan in Washington state. So one more time, all of Kaiser's highly rated private and Medicare Advantage plans are the HMOs plans in type except for one plan in Washington state. So this is good news for those needing budget health insurance because HMOs have lower premiums. So we talked about the differences between HMOs and the PPOs and so on. So they got the lower premiums the no deductibles and lower co-pays prescription drug costs. The downside to an HMO is the stipulation that except in emergencies you must use only doctors, hospitals, and other services that are in the network. So you've got the pros and cons between the HMOs are typically more restrictive but having that more restriction hopefully allows them to lower some of the costs in terms of premiums but you're gonna have to be in network as opposed to the PPO which might have higher premiums but more flexibility to go out of network. For example, it would be the general overview. You can take a look at more details between the HMO and the PPOs in prior presentations. So the plans do however deliver the same essential goods as a PPO plan. Kaiser policies have relatively low premiums.