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Elevance Health, Inc.

Elevance Health, Inc., formerly known as Anthem and WellPoint, is a prominent American-managed healthcare insurance company and the largest for-profit managed care entity within the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association network. The company traces its roots back to the 1940s, originating from two Indiana-based entities established to provide medical coverage. The merger of Anthem and WellPoint in 2004 marked a significant milestone, subsequently adopting the name Elevance Health, Inc. in 2022. With a presence in fourteen states and covering over forty-seven million members, Elevance Health offers various health insurance products, including managed care plans and preferred provider organizations (PPOs).

Elevance Health aims to transform healthcare by emphasizing a holistic approach to health, extending beyond traditional medical services. The company has played a substantial role in health policy advocacy, influencing legislative measures related to health insurance and care access, while also facing scrutiny and legal challenges over its practices. Noteworthy controversies have included data breaches and accusations regarding the cancellation of high-cost policies, reflecting the complex dynamics of its operations. Through its various initiatives and corporate strategies, Elevance Health continues to engage actively in the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare in the United States.

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Company information

  • Date founded: 2004
  • Industry: Managed Health Insurance
  • Corporate headquarters: Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
  • Type: Public

Overview

Elevance Health, Inc., formerly known as Anthem and Wellpoint, is an American-managed healthcare insurance company. It is the largest for-profit managed care entity in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association network. Although its history dates back to the 1940s, Anthem, Inc. was the result of a 2004 merger between the Indianapolis-based Anthem company and WellPoint, a California-based insurance company. Known for a time as WellPoint, the merged company resumed the use of the Anthem name in 2014. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, it was providing managed health insurance coverage for more than forty million members across two dozen states. Following a name change in 2022, the company took on its new parent company’s name, becoming Elevance Health, Inc.

History

The company, now known as Elevance Health since 2022, was known for much of the early twenty-first century as Anthem, Inc. This company originated as two companies established in Indiana in the 1940s. Mutual Hospital Insurance Inc. and Mutual Medical Insurance Inc. were formed in 1946 in Indianapolis, and within three decades, more than three-quarters of the population of Indiana had insurance provided by these companies. Over time, they became known as Blue Cross of Indiana and Blue Shield of Indiana, respectively. Blue Cross plans provide coverage for medical services associated with hospitals, while Blue Shield plans cover doctor’s visits and similar physician services.

In 1972, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans of Indiana merged to become a single entity. They became known as Associated Insurance Companies, Inc., but instead of this corporate name, the company was more commonly known as Anthem. Associated Insurance Companies began acquiring insurance companies in various other states, including Ohio and Kentucky. By 1995, after acquiring plans with nearly two million members in Ohio, the company was officially established as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

Meanwhile, Blue Cross of Northern California and Blue Cross of Southern California merged in 1982 to become Blue Cross of California. The northern and southern companies date back to the 1930s. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the trend in health insurance was moving towards managed care. Managed care plans seek to coordinate care through a primary care physician chosen by each patient. That physician oversees all aspects of the patient’s care, referring them to specialists for additional testing and treatment as needed. The aim of this model is to control costs by reducing repetitive testing and procedures while also improving outcomes for the patient. In 1992, Blue Cross of California established WellPoint as its managed care division.

The following year, WellPoint Health Networks Inc. became a separate entity. Three years later, when Blue Cross of California restructured to for-profit status, it reorganized and made WellPoint Health Networks the parent organization for the entire enterprise. Over the next several years, WellPoint acquired healthcare plans and other associated businesses, such as mail order pharmacy services and dental and vision insurance providers. These acquisitions expanded its reach into Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Wisconsin, and other states.

In November 2004, WellPoint Health Networks merged with Anthem Insurance Company. Anthem became the parent company but adopted the WellPoint, Inc. name. It continued to use Anthem as a brand name for specific product lines in some of the eleven states in which it was doing business at the time.

In 2020s, Elevance Health offered health insurance and related services in fourteen states through an arrangement with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and other insurance entities. The fourteen states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In addition to managed care plans, it also offered PPOs, or preferred provider organizations, that used a network of approved plan providers. Customers received greater cost coverage for services provided by plan providers and paid more for those from out-of-network providers who were not part of the approved list. The comapny also provided hybrid plans that were a combination of managed and non-managed care, as well as vision and dental coverage insurance.

Elevance Health’s 2022 stated purpose was to improve the health of humanity, transform healthcare, and become a partner with physicians and patients in providing quality care. Its annual revenues were reported to be about $198 billion in 2025. The company employed more than one hundred thousand people across all of its nearly six hundred subsidiaries and locations, with its headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. It provided coverage to people in the fourteen states as well as several neighboring states. This brought the number of people covered by Elevance Health to more than forty-five million individuals in more than two dozen states.

Impact

Elevance Health’s impact on health and the health insurance marketplace in the United States has been significant. The company is a powerful lobbyist that impacts government decisions on health-related matters. The company was an outspoken opponent of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Despite its opposition, the measure passed and provided a marketplace where people without employer-sponsored insurance plans could purchase individual health plans with government subsidies. The act also established some requirements for what all health insurance plans had to cover at no or low costs, such as annual physicals and related preventative care.

Elevance Health has also impacted healthcare-related legislative acts. It provided financial resources to lobby either for or against several key plans in Colorado and California between 2006 and 2016. It opposed a 2006 California act related to public funding of political campaigns and a 2014 initiative in the same state addressing public notification of health insurance rate increases. Also in 2014, it supported a California proposal to help prevent veteran homelessness. In 2016, Elevance Health, then Anthem Inc., opposed the ColoradoCare System. In each case, the measures it supported passed, and those it lobbied against failed.

During the 2010s, the company joined a growing initiative to provide doula coverage as part of its maternity services. A doula is a professional hired to assist a woman through pregnancy, birth, and the period immediately following birth. They generally undergo special training but are not medical personnel. Instead, they act as assistants and advocates during the prenatal, labor, and postpartum periods.

In March 2022, Anthem announced another significant rebranding effort. At the center of the rebranding was the name change to Elevance Health, Inc. It was announced the name change would more accurately reflect the company’s focus on elevating its services beyond healthcare to supporting total health for its members and communities. The rebranding did not touch the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield product lines but streamlined several other subsidiaries with the intent of improving care and the customer experience.

The company has been at the center of numerous controversies or legal challenges throughout the years. It has been accused of not fulfilling promises to provide $30 million to help fund care for the uninsured in 2007. Elevance Health also faced legal challenges related to canceling policies for members with conditions that were costly to treat, including breast cancer, as well as the policies of customers who paid with credit cards. The company agreed to settlements in some of these cases without admitting any guilt.

In 2010, the company was investigated after it raised individual coverage premiums for some California members by nearly 40 percent just one year after raising them 68 percent. Following the investigation, the company agreed to postpone the second rate hike. The company has also been accused of misclassifying expenses to gain higher reimbursement from government funding programs such as Medicaid (for low-income individuals) and Medicare (for those over sixty-five and those with disabilities). Elevance Health subsidiaries have also been criticized for refusing payment for emergency room visits related to diagnoses they do not cover, even though the member would have no way of knowing their diagnosis in advance.

In addition, the company has been in the news because of two significant data breaches, one in 2009–2010 and one in 2015. The first happened when a third-party vendor did not restore all the appropriate security measures after some routine system maintenance. The personal information of more than 230,000 people under the age of sixty-five was left exposed for several months. During the second breach, the personal data of about eighty million members of multiple Elevance Health subsidiaries was potentially exposed by the actions of hackers. The company agreed to pay $115 million towards identity theft services for its affected members. Two Chinese nationals were arrested in connection with the 2015 breach.

In 2015, Elevance Health attempted to acquire the Cigna insurance company. The acquisition, which would have cost it $54 billion in cash and assets, became controversial. Critics feared it would reduce competition and increase healthcare costs. The proposal became an issue in the 2016 presidential election and was ultimately stopped by the actions of a federal judge in 2017.

In late 2024, Elevance Health announced a lawsuit against the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over its 3.5-star Medicare Advantage star rating, calling the rating system arbitrary and capricious. Elevance also claimed that the methodology used to determine the ratings was inadequate and inconsistent, leading to unfair scores. The company estimated the ratings would cost them at least $375 million in bonuses and rebates.

In 2025, the US Department of Justice filed a complaint under the False Claims Act (FCA) against Elevance Health and several other major health insurers, along with multiple large insurance broker organizations. The complaint alleged that from 2016 through at least 2021, the insurers paid hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to brokers in exchange for enrollments into their Medicare Advantage plans.


Bibliography

“Anthem.” Forbes, Apr. 2023, fortune.com/company/anthem. Accessed 21 May 2026.

“Anthem to Pay Nearly $40 Million to Settle Data Breach Probe by U.S. States.” Reuters, 30 Sept. 2020, www.reuters.com/article/us-anthem-cyber/anthem-to-pay-nearly-40-million-to-settle-data-breach-probe-by-u-s-states-idUSKBN26L2PW. Accessed 21 May 2026.

Chou, Shih-Chuan (Andrew), and Jeremiah D. Schuur. “Beware This Insurer’s Sneak Attack on Emergency Care Coverage.” Stat, 9 Mar. 2018, www.statnews.com/2018/03/09/anthem-insurance-emergency-care. Accessed 21 May 2026.

Olsen, Emily. “Elevance Health Sues HHS over Medicare Advantage Star Ratings.” Healthcare Dive, 4 Nov. 2024, www.healthcaredive.com/news/elevance-sues-hhs-cms-medicare-advantage-star-ratings/731873. Accessed 21 May 2026.

“The United States Files False Claims Act Complaint Against Three National Health Insurance Companies and Three Brokers Alleging Unlawful Kickbacks and Discrimination Against Disabled Americans.” The US Department Of Justice, 1 May 2025, www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-files-false-claims-act-complaint-against-three-national-health-insurance. Accessed 21 May 2026.

“Who We Are.” Elevance Health, www.elevancehealth.com/who-we-are. Accessed 21 May 2026.

Full Article

Company information

  • Date founded: 2004
  • Industry: Managed Health Insurance
  • Corporate headquarters: Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
  • Type: Public

Overview

Elevance Health, Inc., formerly known as Anthem and Wellpoint, is an American-managed healthcare insurance company. It is the largest for-profit managed care entity in the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association network. Although its history dates back to the 1940s, Anthem, Inc. was the result of a 2004 merger between the Indianapolis-based Anthem company and WellPoint, a California-based insurance company. Known for a time as WellPoint, the merged company resumed the use of the Anthem name in 2014. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, it was providing managed health insurance coverage for more than forty million members across two dozen states. Following a name change in 2022, the company took on its new parent company’s name, becoming Elevance Health, Inc.

History

The company, now known as Elevance Health since 2022, was known for much of the early twenty-first century as Anthem, Inc. This company originated as two companies established in Indiana in the 1940s. Mutual Hospital Insurance Inc. and Mutual Medical Insurance Inc. were formed in 1946 in Indianapolis, and within three decades, more than three-quarters of the population of Indiana had insurance provided by these companies. Over time, they became known as Blue Cross of Indiana and Blue Shield of Indiana, respectively. Blue Cross plans provide coverage for medical services associated with hospitals, while Blue Shield plans cover doctor’s visits and similar physician services.

In 1972, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans of Indiana merged to become a single entity. They became known as Associated Insurance Companies, Inc., but instead of this corporate name, the company was more commonly known as Anthem. Associated Insurance Companies began acquiring insurance companies in various other states, including Ohio and Kentucky. By 1995, after acquiring plans with nearly two million members in Ohio, the company was officially established as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

Meanwhile, Blue Cross of Northern California and Blue Cross of Southern California merged in 1982 to become Blue Cross of California. The northern and southern companies date back to the 1930s. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the trend in health insurance was moving towards managed care. Managed care plans seek to coordinate care through a primary care physician chosen by each patient. That physician oversees all aspects of the patient’s care, referring them to specialists for additional testing and treatment as needed. The aim of this model is to control costs by reducing repetitive testing and procedures while also improving outcomes for the patient. In 1992, Blue Cross of California established WellPoint as its managed care division.

The following year, WellPoint Health Networks Inc. became a separate entity. Three years later, when Blue Cross of California restructured to for-profit status, it reorganized and made WellPoint Health Networks the parent organization for the entire enterprise. Over the next several years, WellPoint acquired healthcare plans and other associated businesses, such as mail order pharmacy services and dental and vision insurance providers. These acquisitions expanded its reach into Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Wisconsin, and other states.

In November 2004, WellPoint Health Networks merged with Anthem Insurance Company. Anthem became the parent company but adopted the WellPoint, Inc. name. It continued to use Anthem as a brand name for specific product lines in some of the eleven states in which it was doing business at the time.

In 2020s, Elevance Health offered health insurance and related services in fourteen states through an arrangement with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and other insurance entities. The fourteen states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In addition to managed care plans, it also offered PPOs, or preferred provider organizations, that used a network of approved plan providers. Customers received greater cost coverage for services provided by plan providers and paid more for those from out-of-network providers who were not part of the approved list. The comapny also provided hybrid plans that were a combination of managed and non-managed care, as well as vision and dental coverage insurance.

Elevance Health’s 2022 stated purpose was to improve the health of humanity, transform healthcare, and become a partner with physicians and patients in providing quality care. Its annual revenues were reported to be about $198 billion in 2025. The company employed more than one hundred thousand people across all of its nearly six hundred subsidiaries and locations, with its headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. It provided coverage to people in the fourteen states as well as several neighboring states. This brought the number of people covered by Elevance Health to more than forty-five million individuals in more than two dozen states.

Impact

Elevance Health’s impact on health and the health insurance marketplace in the United States has been significant. The company is a powerful lobbyist that impacts government decisions on health-related matters. The company was an outspoken opponent of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Despite its opposition, the measure passed and provided a marketplace where people without employer-sponsored insurance plans could purchase individual health plans with government subsidies. The act also established some requirements for what all health insurance plans had to cover at no or low costs, such as annual physicals and related preventative care.

Elevance Health has also impacted healthcare-related legislative acts. It provided financial resources to lobby either for or against several key plans in Colorado and California between 2006 and 2016. It opposed a 2006 California act related to public funding of political campaigns and a 2014 initiative in the same state addressing public notification of health insurance rate increases. Also in 2014, it supported a California proposal to help prevent veteran homelessness. In 2016, Elevance Health, then Anthem Inc., opposed the ColoradoCare System. In each case, the measures it supported passed, and those it lobbied against failed.

During the 2010s, the company joined a growing initiative to provide doula coverage as part of its maternity services. A doula is a professional hired to assist a woman through pregnancy, birth, and the period immediately following birth. They generally undergo special training but are not medical personnel. Instead, they act as assistants and advocates during the prenatal, labor, and postpartum periods.

In March 2022, Anthem announced another significant rebranding effort. At the center of the rebranding was the name change to Elevance Health, Inc. It was announced the name change would more accurately reflect the company’s focus on elevating its services beyond healthcare to supporting total health for its members and communities. The rebranding did not touch the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield product lines but streamlined several other subsidiaries with the intent of improving care and the customer experience.

The company has been at the center of numerous controversies or legal challenges throughout the years. It has been accused of not fulfilling promises to provide $30 million to help fund care for the uninsured in 2007. Elevance Health also faced legal challenges related to canceling policies for members with conditions that were costly to treat, including breast cancer, as well as the policies of customers who paid with credit cards. The company agreed to settlements in some of these cases without admitting any guilt.

In 2010, the company was investigated after it raised individual coverage premiums for some California members by nearly 40 percent just one year after raising them 68 percent. Following the investigation, the company agreed to postpone the second rate hike. The company has also been accused of misclassifying expenses to gain higher reimbursement from government funding programs such as Medicaid (for low-income individuals) and Medicare (for those over sixty-five and those with disabilities). Elevance Health subsidiaries have also been criticized for refusing payment for emergency room visits related to diagnoses they do not cover, even though the member would have no way of knowing their diagnosis in advance.

In addition, the company has been in the news because of two significant data breaches, one in 2009–2010 and one in 2015. The first happened when a third-party vendor did not restore all the appropriate security measures after some routine system maintenance. The personal information of more than 230,000 people under the age of sixty-five was left exposed for several months. During the second breach, the personal data of about eighty million members of multiple Elevance Health subsidiaries was potentially exposed by the actions of hackers. The company agreed to pay $115 million towards identity theft services for its affected members. Two Chinese nationals were arrested in connection with the 2015 breach.

In 2015, Elevance Health attempted to acquire the Cigna insurance company. The acquisition, which would have cost it $54 billion in cash and assets, became controversial. Critics feared it would reduce competition and increase healthcare costs. The proposal became an issue in the 2016 presidential election and was ultimately stopped by the actions of a federal judge in 2017.

In late 2024, Elevance Health announced a lawsuit against the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over its 3.5-star Medicare Advantage star rating, calling the rating system arbitrary and capricious. Elevance also claimed that the methodology used to determine the ratings was inadequate and inconsistent, leading to unfair scores. The company estimated the ratings would cost them at least $375 million in bonuses and rebates.

In 2025, the US Department of Justice filed a complaint under the False Claims Act (FCA) against Elevance Health and several other major health insurers, along with multiple large insurance broker organizations. The complaint alleged that from 2016 through at least 2021, the insurers paid hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to brokers in exchange for enrollments into their Medicare Advantage plans.


Bibliography

“Anthem.” Forbes, Apr. 2023, fortune.com/company/anthem. Accessed 21 May 2026.

“Anthem to Pay Nearly $40 Million to Settle Data Breach Probe by U.S. States.” Reuters, 30 Sept. 2020, www.reuters.com/article/us-anthem-cyber/anthem-to-pay-nearly-40-million-to-settle-data-breach-probe-by-u-s-states-idUSKBN26L2PW. Accessed 21 May 2026.

Chou, Shih-Chuan (Andrew), and Jeremiah D. Schuur. “Beware This Insurer’s Sneak Attack on Emergency Care Coverage.” Stat, 9 Mar. 2018, www.statnews.com/2018/03/09/anthem-insurance-emergency-care. Accessed 21 May 2026.

Olsen, Emily. “Elevance Health Sues HHS over Medicare Advantage Star Ratings.” Healthcare Dive, 4 Nov. 2024, www.healthcaredive.com/news/elevance-sues-hhs-cms-medicare-advantage-star-ratings/731873. Accessed 21 May 2026.

“The United States Files False Claims Act Complaint Against Three National Health Insurance Companies and Three Brokers Alleging Unlawful Kickbacks and Discrimination Against Disabled Americans.” The US Department Of Justice, 1 May 2025, www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-files-false-claims-act-complaint-against-three-national-health-insurance. Accessed 21 May 2026.

“Who We Are.” Elevance Health, www.elevancehealth.com/who-we-are. Accessed 21 May 2026.

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