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Blue Cross Blue Shield is our pick for best overall health insurance provider because of its wide range of advantages, including provider network and widespread availability, good-value silver plans, and plan options.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) established national standards for health insurance plans, but some health insurance companies are better than others when it comes to delivering quality and value.
To identify the best health insurance companies for the 2024 coverage year, we evaluated nine major health insurance companies for 40 criteria that span cost, plan quality and customer satisfaction, plan benefits, state availability, dental coverage, types of plans available, and ACA metal levels available.
We used National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) annual ratings to evaluate plan quality and customer satisfaction. The NCQA is a private nonprofit organization that evaluates health plans for patient care quality, patient satisfaction, and health plans' efforts to improve.
Blue Cross Blue Shield has strong ratings and offers a variety of quality, affordable health insurance plans, making it our top pick as the best overall health insurance provider.
Pros & ConsBlue Cross Blue Shield is our all-around favorite because it hits the mark on a number of fronts. First, it won our best overall cost score, which combines information about premiums, deductibles, and copays across various age groups and metal tiers. BCBS also offers the best value for popular silver plans and the best value for 60-year-olds, based on the quotes we gathered. So, if you’re in that age group or looking for a medium level of coverage, this may be the provider for you.
BCBS has an average NCQA rating of 3.59 out of 5 stars, the second highest of the insurers we reviewed. We like the fact that offerings are robust, too. In addition to health maintenance organization (HMO) plans, BCBS offers preferred provider organization (PPO) plans, exclusive provider organization (EPO) plans, and point-of-service (POS) plans, which is great if you don’t want to be restricted to in-network providers. And you can choose from four metal levels (bronze, silver, gold, platinum) and catastrophic coverage.
Plans are available nationwide but vary by region, and Marketplace plans are not available in all areas. However, BCBS boasts one of the largest provider networks overall, with 1.7 million providers. Blue Cross Blue Shield is also an excellent choice for self-employed people and is our top pick in that category. (Note that we excluded Anthem from our evaluation of BCBS because it is a large competitor of BCBS in some markets.)
Research Insights"Of the different plan types, PPO’s offer the largest network of hospitals and doctors to choose from and the ability to see a specialist without a referral. However, they are considerably more expensive than HMO and EPO plans, either of which could be adequate if you plan to stay in-network and don’t need specialist care. Ultimately, you should consider the level of flexibility you need and how much you’re willing to pay when deciding on the right plan type." —Shanker Narayan, Investopedia Research Analyst
