Health Net

Health Net, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	: HNT
Industry	Managed health care
Headquarters	Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California
Key people	Jay Gellert (CEO)
Products	Health insurance
Number of employees	9,300
Website	healthnet.com

Health Net, Inc. is an American health care insurance provider. HMO, POS, insured PPO and government contracts subsidiaries provide health benefits to approximately 5.9 million individuals in all 50 states and the District of Columbia through group, individual, Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare and Veterans Affairs programs. Health Net's behavioral health services subsidiary, MHN, provides behavioral health, substance abuse and employee assistance programs (EAPs) to approximately 7.3 million individuals in various states, including the company's own health plan members. The company's subsidiaries also offer managed health care products related to prescription drugs, and offer managed health care product coordination for multi-region employers and administrative services for medical groups and self-funded benefits programs. St. Louis-based Centene announced in July that it plans to buy Health Net for $6.8 billion.

Health Net's headquarters are located in St. Louis, MO. Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.

Health Net of California was first established as a non-profit corporation in 1977. A 1992 state of California order permitted the health care company to convert itself from a nonprofit into a for-profit company. At the same time, the state order required the new company to transfer 80% of its equity to the California Wellness Foundation, a successor charity to its non-profit status. Under the terms of the California Department of Corporations' conversion order approving Health Net's for-profit status, the California Wellness Foundation received $300 million plus 80 percent of the equity of Health Net's parent holding company.

In August 1993, Health Net merged with Qualmed to form Health Systems International. The merger created a 1.8-million-member HMO with a market value of $725 million, one of the biggest publicly traded health care companies at the time. Dr. Malik Hasan had founded Qual-Med, with his wife Seeme Hasan in southern Colorado. Qual-Med first went public in June 1991.

In May 1997 Health Systems International merged with Foundation Health Corporation to form Foundation Health Systems. At the time of the merger the newly created Foundation Health was valued at $1.27 billion and was the 4th largest health insurer in the U.S. and the second largest HMO in California. It had more than 5 million members in 17 states and in 2.8 California. In November 2000 Foundation Health Systems officially changed its name to Health Net, Inc. when the company started trading on the New York Stock under the symbol HNT.