THE NATIONAL ROSTER: CIGNA
Headquarters:
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania2007 Profits:
$1.115 billion2007 CEO Total Compensation:
H. Edward Hanway, $25,839,777
Like some of the other big players, CIGNA is a multinational business, with branches around the world, from South Korea, to Europe, to Chile.
Infamous For:
“Limited Benefit Polices”
CIGNA has been a leader in “limited benefit policies”--barebones coverage with caps on benefits. The company describes its Starbridge Choices plan this way: “Starbridge Choices is a limited-benefit medical plan that meets the day-to-day needs of today’s hourly workforce at a price that fits their financial situation.”
CIGNA picked up its Starbridge products when it purchased StarHRG from HealthMarkets in 2006. (HealthMarkets’ MEGA Life and Health, which targets the self-employed, has been investigated across the country for shady sales practices and shoddy coverage.) “When people like me and people in our industry initially saw these offerings, we were kind of embarrassed by them,” Bill Crimmins, a “wholesaler who connects insurance companies to brokers,” confessed to the Indianapolis Business Journal on November 19, 2007.
Translation:
You get what your limited wages can pay for—stripped down coverage that may not be worth the paper it’s written on.
Read about other insurance companies on the national roster:
Aetna | Coventry | Health Net | Humana | UnitedHealth Group | WellPoint
LATEST SCORECARD
Fifty-eight percent of primary care doctors in the U.S. report their patients often have difficulty paying for medications and care, and half of U.S. doctors spend substantial time dealing with restrictions insurance companies place on their patients’ care, according to the 2009 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey.
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Families saw their premiums for job-based health insurance rise to an average of $13,375 annually in 2009, with workers paying an average share of $3,515 and employers paying $9,860.
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