MMIT Payer Portrait: Health Care Service Corp.

Aug 09
Aug 09, 2021

Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) is the parent company of five large, member owned Blues insurers: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. The five subsidiaries enroll more than 16 million lives nationwide across the spectrum of health insurance products, though much of their membership is concentrated in Illinois and Texas. Originally founded in 1936 in Chicago as a prepaid insurance plan for hospital care, HCSC now enrolls more than half of all insured lives in Illinois.

HCSC is a partial owner of its pharmacy benefits manager, Prime Therapeutics, the PBM owned and operated by 18 Blues affiliates. AllianceRx Walgreens Prime, the PBM's specialty pharmacy partnership with Walgreen Co., handles much of HCSC's specialty contracting, though BCBS of New Mexico and BCBS of Oklahoma also contract with Cigna Corp.'s Accredo Health Group for specialty drug management.

In March 2021, HCSC unveiled a strategic partnership with Collective Health, a health care startup company whose tech allows employer groups to integrate and manage employee insurance benefits, costs and member health data all on one platform, in addition to providing a personalized, more navigable experience on the consumer end. HCSC then led a $280 million Series F funding round for the startup in May, which the companies said will be used to scale the platform for use by an insurer of HCSC's size. The transition to Collective Health's platform will begin with HCSC's self-funded clients in Illinois and Texas in January 2022.

NOTE: Health Care Service Corp.'s five Blues subsidiaries are represented as separate entities linked by a Parent ID in DHP.

SOURCE: DHP, AIS’s Directory of Health Plans; MMIT Analytics. Learn more about subscribing to AIS Health's publications here: https://bit.ly/3xypXM4.
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Carina Belles

Carina has been covering public-sector health care since 2018. As a data reporter for Radar on Medicare Advantage, she creates infographics and data stories on issues impacting Medicare, Medicaid and Part D. She also develops AIS Health Daily, a free daily newsletter that showcases AIS’s strong reporting across our four publications and parent company Norstella’s suite of market access and data solutions. Prior to joining the editorial team, she managed Medicare and Medicaid data for the Directory of Health Plans, AIS’s industry-standard health coverage database. She graduated from Ohio University with a B.S. in Journalism.