who owns blue cross blue shield
Blue Cross Blue Shield is not owned by a single company; it is a system of independent health insurance companies that license the “Blue Cross” and “Blue Shield” brands from a central association.
Who actually “owns” Blue Cross Blue Shield?
- The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) owns and controls the Blue Cross and Blue Shield names and logos.
- BCBSA is a national association made up of independent, locally operated companies (about 33–34 plans, depending on how they’re counted).
- These companies are licensed to use the Blue Cross Blue Shield brands in exclusive geographic areas (for example, one plan for Michigan, another for North Carolina, etc.).
In other words, nobody “owns” Blue Cross Blue Shield as one single corporation the way a parent company owns a typical national brand. Instead:
- The association owns the trademarks.
- The local plans (some non-profit, some for-profit) own and run their own insurance businesses under license.
Examples of ownership at the local level
Different Blue plans have different structures:
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts describes itself as a community-focused, tax-paying, not-for-profit health plan headquartered in Boston.
- Some other Blue plans are part of larger for-profit holding companies , such as Elevance Health (formerly Anthem), which operates several Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans under license in multiple states.
So when you ask “who owns Blue Cross Blue Shield,” the most accurate short answer is:
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association owns the brands, while dozens of separate regional companies —some non-profit, some for-profit—own and operate the actual insurance plans in their territories under license.
TL;DR:
No single corporation owns all of Blue Cross Blue Shield. A central
association owns the brand, and independent regional companies (each with
their own owners/structures) run the plans under license.
Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.