Florida Blue is ranked among Insure.com’s Best Health Insurance Companies of 2024. The insurer earned 3.3 stars out of 5.
Insurance expert Mel Duvall is an award-winning business journalist with a background in covering insurance, banking and personal finance. His work has appeared in leading publications such as The Financial Post, American Banker and Baseline Magazine.
John McCormick is an insurance expert and the editorial director for QuinStreet's insurance sites -- CarInsurance.com, Insurance.com and Insure.com. Before joining QuinStreet, he was a deputy editor at The Wall Street Journal and was an editor and reporter at several media outlets where he covered insurance, personal finance and technology.
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Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida is No. 14 on Insure.com’s list of the Best Health Insurance Companies for 2024 with a star rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars. It was one of only three insurers with an A+ rating from AM Best, indicating Florida Blue’s financial stability.
The insurer also received 3 out of 5 stars from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. NCQA evaluates healthcare plans on, among other things, member satisfaction.
It had lower marks than other top insurers in areas such as policy offerings and digital experience, but 90% of its customers who responded to Insure.com’s survey of insurance consumers said they would sign up again with Florida Blue.
Below is Insure.com’s review of the company. It’s based on third-party metrics and our in-depth survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here, including an explanation of our survey scores.
Florida Blue ranked 10th for affordability among the companies we looked at and we found that the company’s rates are comparable to other insurers (see below).
Below is a look at how Florida Blue rates in Florida compare with those of UnitedHealthcare and Aetna for similar plans. These are 2024 healthcare exchange rates for a single, 40-year-old male in excellent health with an annual income of $70,000.
Almost seven out of 10 Florida Blue customers say they are satisfied with the insurer. A few other insurers ranked higher in this category, which Kaiser led. However, the company did better when looking at average J.D. Power’s health plan scores for Florida. J.D. Power measures health plans for overall customer satisfaction.
Florida Blue offers a range of individual and family plans, Medicare and employer plans. Six out of 10 customers surveyed by Insure.com said they were happy with the Florida Blue’s offerings. BCBS of Michigan came out on top in this category.
More than 70% of customers said they would recommend Florida Blue, but that was one of the lower scores among the top insurers in our survey. BCBS of Michigan led this category, with 100% of the customers we surveyed saying they would recommend it.
Florida Blue finished in the lower half in this category, with 60% of its customers giving it high marks here. But this was a tough category. Kaiser was the top-rated insurer in this category but was one of only four to score above 80%.
Yes. Of the customers we surveyed, 90% said they planned to renew with Florida Blue. BCBS of Michigan and Highmark came out on top in this category.
Florida Blue didn’t do especially well here, but then very few health insurers did.
While it didn’t rank among the top companies for affordability, Florida Blue ranked fourth in this category. But this was another area where insurers struggled to do well. Aetna, Cigna and HCSC were in a three-way tie at the top of this category, with 31% of their customers giving them high marks.
Florida Blue has a big provider network in the Sunshine State and customers rated it in the top half in Insure.com’s survey results. But this was another category where the insurers we ranked didn’t do especially well. Molina led this category, with 31% of its customers giving it a good grade here.
Florida Blue’s beginnings date back to 1945, when the Florida Hospital Service began operations in Jacksonville, Florida. The following year, the Florida Medical Services Corp. was also formed, later becoming Blue Shield of Florida.
In 1980, the two companies came together under the Blue Cross and Blue Shield organization to create what is now known as Florida Blue.
Today, it has a customer base of about 6 million members and a provider network that spans the Sunshine State. Through its philanthropic arm, Florida Blue Foundation, the company invests in a wide range of programs and organizations that tackle health inequities among at-risk communities.
It has been at the forefront of incorporating virtual healthcare into its offerings. In 2022, it launched a service with Sanitas Medical Centers, a key provider in its network, to offer around-the-clock access to care via video, through an app or by text or email.
Earlier in 2022, Hurricane Ian presented a hectic challenge and Florida Blue responded on a number of fronts. With many urgent care clinics and doctors’ offices shut in the wake of the hurricane, Florida Blue began offering free virtual doctor visits.
Through the service, clinicians were able to help with a wide range of non-emergency conditions and could also prescribe some medications. Florida Blue also partnered with New Directions Behavioral Health to offer a toll-free emotional support helpline during the crisis.
Sources:
Florida Blue website Accessed February 2024.
Insure.com in the fall of 2023 surveyed more than 1,750 insurance consumers (1,433 people with health insurance). The survey was conducted by online market research company Slice MR.
Respondents were asked to name their insurer and then grade it in a number of categories, including ease of service and policy offerings. The percentage of respondents who said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurer is presented in the results.
In addition, the editors also created star rankings for each company. Respondents were asked to pick their insurer’s top three attributes out of the more than the dozen they were presented – including categories such as customer satisfaction and price/affordability. The number of responses for each of those attributes was totaled and then divided by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create the star ranking.
Respondents were also asked if they would recommend their insurer to someone else and if they planned to renew their policies. The percentage who said yes is presented in the results.
They also were given the statement “I trust my insurance company” and asked if they strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. The percentage of those who said they agreed or strongly agreed is presented in the results.
The editors compiled the survey results and then selected – based on the number of survey responses – the top companies for further evaluation. Insure.com needed 30 or more of a health insurer’s customers to respond to the survey for a company to be included in the ranking.
They then collected AM Best financial stability ratings and National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) ratings, which evaluate health plans on, among other things, member satisfaction.
With the help of Prof. David Marlett, Ph.D., managing director of the Brantley Risk and Insurance Center at Appalachian State University, the editors created a rating system to determine which insurance companies were best in each sector. For health insurers, we used the following weights to calculate the overall score for each company:
Each insurer was awarded from 1 to 5 stars. No insurer in our star ranking received less than 1 star and the highest possible ranking is 5 stars.
On company review pages, the editors compared the profiled insurers in various categories against the leaders in that category or against other top insurers that match up well against the profiled company in terms of size and/or coverage area.