Florida Blue Cross and Blue Shield is in the midst of reorganizing into a "policyholder-owned, not-for-profit mutual insurance holding company."
The state's largest health insurer, with 1.3 million covered lives and about three million more administered, Florida Blue has a proposal pending with the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, and public hearings were held in late July.
The mutual structure would offer the 69-year-old company greater flexibility amid regulatory and market chances, executives said.
For one thing, it would bring Florida Blue a greater "ability to appropriately accumulate and deploy available capital" and the "potential for greater access to capital," chief accounting officer Chuck Divita said in a presentation.
It would also offer "a unique platform for mergers and acquisitions," while providing "similarities to for-profit competitors, however executed with a not-for-profit mission," Divita said.
"The unprecedented change that the health insurance and healthcare delivery industries are undergoing creates unique opportunities for Florida Blue to extend our leadership position to provide comprehensive healthcare solutions for our customers and the communities we serve," Florida Blue CEO Patrick Geraghty, who joined the company in 2011 after three years as CEO for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, said in a media release.
Geraghty and other Florida Blue leaders pitched the proposal to the Office of Insurance Regulation and members of the public as one with benefits for the company, its policyholders and potentially stockholders, although there are no plans for being publicly-traded.
The mutual insurance holding company would have several subsidiaries under the Newco Holding Company -- one being a new BCBSF Foundation, and another doing business as Florida Blue and managing units such as the National Institute for Health Care Management, Capital Health Plan and Health Intelligence Company.
Florida Blue's reorganization proposal comes after the recent mutualization of Michigan Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and as the Florida insurer continues an ongoing diversification strategy. Florida Blue was an early entrant into health insurance retail, with 11 health and wellness centers, and is venturing into clinical services -- recently acquiring the 75-physician Diagnostic Clinic Medical Group of greater St. Petersburg.
With Florida Blue also turning to Medicare and Medicaid business, it recently hired former Pennsylvania Congressman Jason Altmire as senior VP for government affairs.