Maxicare and Major Black Insurer in Marketing Deal : Alliance: The HMO and Golden State Mutual Life will offer each other’s products nationwide.

Maxicare Health Plans and Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co., a major black-owned insurer, Thursday announced an alliance to sell each other’s products nationwide.

The alliance adds Maxicare’s Medicare supplement and group HMO plans to Golden State Mutual’s product line, and gives Maxicare access to Golden State’s strong client base in the black community. “Our product lines are highly complementary,” said Warren Foon, Maxicare’s vice president for plan operations.

Maxicare is strong in selling group plans to employers, while Golden State Mutual’s strength lies in its contacts with individual policyholders, including seniors who would be interested in Maxicare’s Medicare supplement plans, and small minority-owned businesses, Foon said.

Maxicare will also offer Golden State Mutual’s life insurance and annuity products to employers that now use its HMO plans, Foon said. While Maxicare sells group life insurance to employers through its own subsidiary, the Golden State Mutual products will not directly compete because they are targeted at individuals, he said.

Community leaders, including Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, praised the alliance at a joint press conference Thursday morning as the sort of cooperation the city needs to rebuild. “Especially in the light of the riots, it gives even more importance to an agreement like this,” said Harold E. Toliver, director of marketing and public relations at Golden State Mutual.

Under Medicare supplement plans to be marketed by Golden State Mutual and administered by Maxicare, seniors could get coverage for deductibles and other expenses not covered by the government plan at no monthly cost to them. The federal government, in an effort to move seniors into HMO-type care that controls costs, pays Maxicare $410 a month in the Los Angeles area to care for people it signs up for the program.

Golden State Mutual plans to urge clients to replace its current, more limited Medicare supplement plan--for which clients must pay a monthly premium--with the no-fee Maxicare plan. Salesmen will then urge clients to use the savings to get life insurance coverage through a Golden State Mutual policy, Toliver said. Agents will also get commissions for selling the Maxicare plans, Foon said.

Golden State Mutual was founded in 1925 to serve the black community by William Nickerson Jr. It has 300,000 policyholders nationwide, of whom 90% are black. It is the nation’s third-largest black-owned insurer. About 80% of the company’s business is in life insurance, with the remainder in indemnity health insurance.

Maxicare, based in Los Angeles, is one of the country’s largest HMOs.