By: Bruce Japsen
Forbes.com
The departure of top executives at Health Care Service Corp. could open the door to an eventual merger with a number of Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans including Anthem.
The regulatory and political hurdles could be too steep to pull off given the different ownership structures of Health Care ServiceCorp., also known as HCSC, and Anthem, but these aren’t ordinary times when it comes to deals within the health insurance industry.
Because Anthem, the nation’s second-largest health insurer with 41 million enrollees, is a for-profit publicly-traded operator of Blue Cross plans, the acquisition of HCSC would face additional layers of approvals given HCSC is a mutual health insurer owned by policyholders. HCSC, the nation’s fourth-largest health insurer with 16 million health plan enrollees, owns and operates Blue Cross plans in five states.