Elevance (formerly known as Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield), is No. 8 on Insure.com’s 2024 Best Health Insurance Companies list – earning 3.8 stars out of 5.
Mel Duvall is an award-winning senior business writer and communications professional. Mel also served a three-year term on the Mount Royal University Journalism Committee.
John is the editorial director for CarInsurance.com, Insurance.com and Insure.com. Before joining QuinStreet, John was a deputy editor at The Wall Street Journal and had been an editor and reporter at a number of other media outlets where he covered insurance, personal finance, and technology.
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One of Elevance Health’s key strengths is its high member loyalty, with 94% of customers saying they would stick with the insurer – among the highest scores of the companies we ranked. The insurer also received a strong 4 out of 5 stars from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. NCQA evaluates healthcare plans on, among other things, member satisfaction.
Overall, it’s eighth on Insure.com’s list of the Best Health Insurance Companies for 2024 with a star rating of 3.8 (actually, 3.78) out of 5 stars.
Elevance Health is a good choice if you’re looking for a one-stop shop for health insurance, vision, dental, pharmacy and Medicare plans, and when traveling, policyholders have access to the wider Blue Cross Blue Shield network.
Before June 2022, Elevance Health was known as Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and policies continue to be marketed under the Anthem and Blue brands.
AM Best's Financial Strength Rating is an independent opinion of an insurer's financial strength and ability to meet its ongoing insurance policy and contract obligations.
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.
Customers put Elevance in the middle of the pack for affordability – although its rates stack up well against competitors in given markets (see below). Kaiser Permanente’s customers give it the highest score in this category.
Here’s how Elevance’s rates in Ohio compare with those of UnitedHealthcare and Molina for a similar plan. These are 2024 healthcare exchange rates for a single, 40-year-old male in excellent health with an annual income of $70,000.
Our survey found that 75% of Elevance’s members think it does a nice job of satisfying customers. While a strong percentage, it placed in the middle of the companies we ranked. Kaiser is the top-rated company in this category. Elevance, however, rated well in regional J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study scores, such as the Northeast (score shown below). The J.D. Power study measures health plans for overall customer satisfaction.
Elevance offers lots of choices, including plans beyond traditional health insurance. Despite that, customers didn’t give its policy offerings the strongest marks. BCBS of Michigan topped this category.
Elevance did well in this category, with 85% of customers saying they would recommend the company to others. BCBS of Michigan had the highest score among the companies we ranked, with all its customers saying they would suggest the company to friends and family.
The majority of customers we surveyed trust Elevance. Kaiser Permanente led this category, with 86% of its customers saying they trusted it.
Absolutely. Customers seem to recognize they get good value and coverage for their money, with 94% saying they would renew. That was among the highest responses in this category. BCBS of Michigan and Highmark led the category.
Elevance ranked sixth in this category, which rated companies’ websites and apps. But it should be noted, none of the companies in our survey did especially well here.
Elevance received the fifth-highest score in this category, although it should be noted that no insurer did particularly well here. There was a three-way tie at the top of this category between Aetna, Cigna and HCSC, with 31% of their customers giving the companies high marks here.
A healthcare provider network is a group of doctors, specialists and hospitals that provide services to insured members at a lower cost than providers outside the network. A strong provider network can be a key consideration when shopping for a health plan. Elevance, which has one of the largest networks of doctors, hospitals and healthcare workers, ranked third in this category, which Molina led. However, this was another area where no insurer received especially high marks.
Elevance Health is one of the largest health insurers in the country, serving 14 states and about 4.75 million members. Its provider network includes more than 100,000 employees.
The company has a direct presence in 14 states, with a large concentration in the Midwest, Northeast, Colorado, Nevada and California. It’s headquartered in Indianapolis.
The company dates to 1946 when it was originally called Mutual Hospital Insurance and Mutual Medical Insurance. It grew quickly and by the 1970s had secured 80% of the Indiana market. In 1985, the companies purchased the provider of Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Ohio and rebranded itself as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
Meanwhile, WellPoint Health Networks was created by Blue Cross of California. Over the years, WellPoint and Anthem merged with other BCBS affiliates until the two companies came together in 2004. In 2014, WellPoint officially changed its name to Anthem. In 2017 it made a push into the pharmacy business, launching IngenioRx, a pharmacy benefits manager. That company, along with other subsidiaries, are now being folded into a Carelon brand.
Following its rebranding in June of 2022, Anthem became Elevance Health. The company says the change was made to better reflect its evolution to offer policies and products beyond traditional health insurance.
Sources:
Elevance Health “corporate information.” Accessed January 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.