Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas

Company Overview
Since its founding, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX) has provided affordable health insurance coverage to its members who now total more than 4-million. As the only privately-held health insurance provider in the state of Texas, it focuses its attention on its customers instead of shareholders. This is demonstrated by the number of large well-known companies such as Texas Instruments, Continental Airlines, and Haliburton, who utilize its products and services.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas Ratings »

What’s more, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas is the only administrator of the Texas Health Insurance Risk pool, which means thousands of uninsured Texans are assured of health insurance coverage when they might otherwise have none.

History
BCBSTX can locate its founding all the way back to 1929 at Baylor University with a plan offering teachers three weeks of hospital care for $6 per year. As the company grew, it began offering coverage to other employee groups in Dallas and later expanded to national coverage. The Blue Shield brand was developed at the start of last century with lumber and mining employers in the Pacific Northwest paying a monthly fee to a designated group of physicians.Blue Shield and the Blue Cross Associationmerged in 1982 to become the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas today is based upon the Texas division of Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), which is a mutual legal reserve company. HCSC dates back to 1936 and today is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Overall, HCSC operates BCBS of Illinois, BCBS of New Mexico, and BCBS of Oklahoma.

Current Organization
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas was founded more than 70 years ago and Texas remains the only state in which they do business.Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas has an excellent variety of benefits and finance plans tailored to the specific needs of its members. By working tirelessly to meet and exceed their level of commitment, they strive constantly improve the health of the local areas they service.

Overall, there are forty-one Blue Plans with a member network exceeding 90-million. In fact, that is about one-third of those who have health insurance in the United States. A majority of Fortune 500 companies cover their employees with plans from Blue Cross Blue Shield.