Anthem Blue Cross 2005 Annual Report Download - page 11

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9
Letter to Our Shareholders, Customers and Communities
The acquisition allows us to provide a seamless product offering in the Northeast.
There are significant growth opportunities in every business segment, and we will be
able to sell our specialty products, such as life insurance, to more health plan members.
There are also operational and cost savings to be realized from the WellChoice
transaction, and we expect $25 million in 2006 synergies. We have created a new
East Region for WellPoint, headed by Michael Stocker, M.D., formerly president and
CEO of WellChoice.
customer-focused initiatives
Much of our work in 2005 focused on offering innovative new products and services for
consumers. In June, we acquired Lumenos, a pioneer in consumer-driven health care.
A consumer-driven health plan provides consumers with a personal health account
along with tools, information and services to help them maintain and improve their
health. Our focus now is to introduce Lumenos products and services to our members
and to further build an industry-leading consumer-driven portfolio. At the end of
2005, we served 507,000 consumer-driven health plan members.
We are continuing our efforts to reach uninsured Americans with affordable
health care coverage. Having demonstrated the success of our Tonik product among
the uninsured in California, we expanded it to new markets in 2005. Through
Tonik and other innovative products, in
2005 we provided new individual
policies to 378,000 people who had
previously been uninsured.
In 2005, we built a stand-alone unit
totally focused on our national accounts
customers. We unified the identity of the
business under the Anthem Blue Cross
and Blue Shield brand as Anthem
National Accounts in the states where
we operate Blue Cross or Blue Cross
Blue Shield companies.
We’re developing integrated benefits
solutions that combine medical coverage with our wide range of specialty benefits
such as vision and dental plans. We offer customers a single point of contact for all
their benefits needs. In an increasing number of markets, we also offer the adminis-
trative ease of one bill, one ID card and one customer service number for medical and
specialty products.
In 2005, WellPoint provided
health benefits to more Americans
than any other company, and we are
on course for continued growth by
focusing on our customers.