Listen to the Worm Turn

WellPoint is re-branding. Or, more accurately, WellPoint hopes to re-brand pending shareholder approval. WellPoint is the behemoth of the for profit commercial health insurance market in California. Branding under WellPoint, it seems, is a better way to approach individual health insurance product consumers purchasing through the exchanges or through privately operated marketplaces. It is curious that WellPoint (37.3 million members as of June 30, 2014) has become the agressive market entrant in the ACA health insurance exchanges after having been such an agressive opponent of the ACA.

And Anthem is a brand with its own less than sterling associations — 2007 rescission problems and 2010 rate increases– both of which, unwittingly or not, served to advance the cause of the ACA in California.

And so we have it: ACA opponent and ACA architect re-inventing their brand as a consumer-oriented investor owned managed care company. And, yet, those names resonate.