Secure Horizons Will Offer Plan in Santa Barbara

Secure Horizons, which sells health insurance to Medicare recipients, said Wednesday that it has won federal approval to offer its plan in Santa Barbara County.

Craig Schub, vice president of Secure Horizons, said he hopes that the expansion will increase by 3% to 4% the number of members--now 172,000--that the plan has in California.

He said the company, a division of PacifiCare Health Services, is also planning to move into the rest of the San Francisco Bay area and Palm Springs, pending approval by the federal Health Care Financing Administration.

Secure Horizons is the first Medicare substitution plan in Santa Barbara County, which has an estimated 45,000 senior citizens, Schub said. Such substitution plans offer private health-care services for the same amount of money that subscribers would pay for Medicare; the federal government withholds the money from monthly Social Security checks, then pays a slightly lesser sum to the company. In Santa Barbara County, Secure Horizons will receive an average of about $300 a month for each senior it signs up.