Wellpoint

WellPoint Health Networks Inc. ranks among the largest publicly traded healthcare insurers in the United States. Its approximately 6.6 million members nationwide are served by two subsidiaries: Blue Cross of California and UNICARE. WellPoint offers a comprehensive selection of healthcare products, including health maintenance organizations (HMOs), preferred provider organizations (PPOs), point-of-service plans (POS), self-insured employer sponsored programs, and specialty plans for dental, optical, pharmacy, and mental health coverage. WellPoint’s principal products in California are the CaliforniaCare HMO and the Prudent Buyer Plan PPO. The latter is the state’s largest PPO with approximately 2.8 million members served by a network of some 42,000 physicians and 443 hospitals. On the national level, WellPoint’s most important plans are the UNICARE Classic POS modeled on the Prudent Buyer Plan and the UNICARE Health Plans HMO which as of March 1998 was still in the early start-up stage.