PacifiCare to Unveil New Ad for Medicare HMO
PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. will launch an advertising campaign next week aimed at bolstering its lead in the fast-growing market for Medicare managed-care plans.
PacifiCare’s Secure Horizons, a health maintenance organization for people age 65 and over, recently reached the half-million mark in enrollment. That includes 365,000 HMO Medicare members in California, making Cypress-based PacifiCare by far the state’s largest provider of managed-care health services to the elderly.
The campaign will consist of running full-page ads in major newspapers in California and five other states where Secure Horizons has members. PacifiCare, which produced the ad internally, declined to say how much the campaign is costing.
The ad depicts eight elderly people standing in front of a church in Glennville, a town north of Bakersfield where, according to PacifiCare, 23 of 46 seniors signed up with Secure Horizons.
“In Glennville, they still hold strong beliefs in America,” the ad reads. “And in their senior health plan.”
In California, three out of every 10 Medicare enrollees belong to HMOs. Nationwide, however, slightly less than 10% of the 36 million Medicare members are in HMOs.
Michael Lombardi, Secure Horizons’ vice president, said that’s a huge, untapped market for companies such as his. “Medicare risk [HMO] programs are going to be growing at a rapid rate over the next few years,” he said.
Secure Horizons has been around since 1985, but membership has surged only in recent years as HMOs and other managed-care plans have taken hold. Also, HMOs such as PacifiCare have been more aggressive in recruiting Medicare members--offering, for instance, free meals at a restaurant while salespeople pitch the health plans to them.
For the elderly, one attraction is that HMOs generally provide additional benefits, such as prescription-drug coverage and wellness programs. The trade-off is that like other HMO members, they are limited in their use of doctors and hospitals.
Lombardi said Secure Horizons is now growing faster than PacifiCare’s commercial HMO programs. In all, PacifiCare has 1.9 million commercial and Medicare members.
According to a report in February by the Health Care Financing Administration, which oversees the Medicare program, PacifiCare had 504,372 Medicare members nationwide. Second was Kaiser Permanente, with 383,318, followed by FHP International Corp. in Fountain Valley, with 375,975.
