Welcome Blue Ambassadors

BCBSA and the 39 locally-based, community-operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies welcome the strong commitment by President Obama and Congress to enact bipartisan healthcare reform legislation this year. The Blues strongly support comprehensive reform that expands coverage to everyone, improves quality of care, and helps bring costs under control. We are excited about the opportunity to participate in this historic debate and early on set forth our reform vision through a comprehensive proposal, “The Pathway to Covering America.” With the debate intensifying, now is the time for us, as members of the Blue family, to share 75 years of experience to help shape meaningful and sustainable reforms that will improve healthcare in each and every community throughout America.

The Blue Ambassadors program offers you, a valued member of our Blue family, a framework to help inform policymakers about key issues and their effect on consumers, providers, and payers. Become a Blue Ambassador now and tell Congress to Get Health Reform Right by passing legislation that is built on workable solutions like those found in our five-point plan, “The Pathway to Covering America.” These include (1) encouraging research on what works; (2) changing incentives to promote better care; (3) empowering consumers and providers with information and tools; (4) promoting health and wellness by encouraging healthy lifestyles to prevent disease and manage chronic illnesses; and (5) fostering public-private coverage solutions through subsidies and targeted expansions of public programs to cover everyone.

While we all agree that it is important to enact comprehensive healthcare reform this year, we must avoid proposals, particularly a government-run health plan, that would actually undermine the goals of reform and have devastating consequences for our healthcare system. A new government plan would cause many people to lose the employer coverage they enjoy today and would create major problems with access to care by underpaying providers. Key health reform decisions will be made very soon and we need to act now. If you choose to participate in education efforts about the consequences of a new government-run health plan, this site provides background information on the issue and materials to help inform others. Included on this site are:

• An overview of BCBSA’s proposal for comprehensive reform;
• Background on the government-run plan proposal, including commonly asked questions and answers;
• A comparison of the major proposals before Congress and how they deal with the key issues we are following closely;
• A regularly updated report on the status of healthcare reform deliberations;
• One-page summaries which you can use to inform others;
• Ways to easily communicate with policymakers on this issue;
• A way to be kept informed, with the option of participating in ongoing communications on issues of your choice.

Thank you for your time, enthusiasm, and support for reform that makes high-quality healthcare affordable and available to everyone.

Yours in good health,


Scott Serota
President and CEO