Search “Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield” and you get two different problems at once. The first is that Anthem does not publish a single price anywhere on its website. The second is that half the people searching that phrase do not actually have an Anthem plan, they have a Blue Cross plan run by a completely different company.
This page fixes both. The prices come from CMS’s 2026 Exchange Public Use Files, which list the filed premium for every marketplace plan in every federal-platform state, and the brand structure comes from Elevance Health’s SEC filings and Anthem’s own state list. Everything is 2026 plan year data unless labeled otherwise, and the CMS figures were imported to CMS systems by August 4, 2026.
This page covers individual, family, and employer coverage. For the Medicare side, see Anthem Medicare Advantage, which is a separate product with its own premiums and star ratings.
What Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Actually Is
Anthem is a brand owned by Elevance Health, one of the largest health insurers in the country. Elevance’s most recent quarterly filing reports approximately 44.9 million medical members as of June 30, 2026. Of those, 1.32 million are in the Individual market, down 2.3% from a year earlier, and 3.4 million are in employer group risk-based plans.
Elevance is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Its filings state that it serves members as the Blue Cross licensee for California and as the Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee for Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri (excluding 30 counties in the Kansas City area), Nevada, New Hampshire, New York (in the New York City metropolitan area and upstate New York), Ohio, Virginia (excluding the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C.), and Wisconsin. That is 14 states, and Anthem’s consumer-facing individual and family page lists exactly the same 14.
Blue Cross Blue Shield is a federation, not a company
This is the part that trips people up. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association describes itself as an association of independent, community-based and locally operated companies. Its own site references 33 BCBS companies providing coverage for 118 million members across all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico.
Anthem is one of those licensees. In Texas or Illinois, a Blue Cross plan is Health Care Service Corporation. In Michigan it is Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. In Florida it is Florida Blue. Same cross and shield, different company, different network, different premium, different quality rating. Anthem’s own page even says so, telling visitors that if their state is not on the list they should visit bcbs.com for other coverage options.
Elevance itself sells outside Anthem’s 14 states under other names. Its filings list Wellpoint, Carelon, MMM, and Simply Healthcare as separate go-to-market brands, and CMS’s 2026 marketplace data carries Wellpoint as its own distinct issuer in Texas and Florida with its own premiums. So even “an Elevance plan” and “an Anthem plan” are not the same thing.
How Anthem’s Individual Plans Work
In the five states where Anthem files on the federal platform (Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Wisconsin), CMS’s 2026 data shows 112 individual, non-dental plan IDs. Of those, 81 are HMOs, 20 are EPOs, and 11 are POS plans. There is not a single individual PPO among them.
That matters more than it sounds. HMOs and EPOs generally do not cover routine out-of-network care at all, and an HMO usually requires a referral to see a specialist. If you are used to employer PPO coverage, an individual Anthem plan is a narrower product than the badge suggests. Read HMO vs. PPO and in-network vs. out-of-network before you assume your current doctors carry over.
Anthem’s individual plans are sold through different legal entities in every state, which is why your ID card may say RightCHOICE, Community Insurance Company, HealthKeepers, or Matthew Thornton Health Plan rather than Anthem. Those are the same coverage, just the licensed underwriter for your state.
What Anthem Health Insurance Costs in 2026
Anthem publishes no premiums. Its individual and family page asks for a ZIP code and routes you to a quote. So the figures below come from CMS’s Rate PUF: filed, unsubsidized monthly premiums for a 40-year-old non-smoker in the five federal-platform states. California, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, and Virginia all run their own exchanges and are not in this dataset.
| Metal level | Lowest | Median | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catastrophic | $277.59 | $401.81 | $614.39 |
| Bronze and expanded bronze | $323.59 | $460.63 | $802.21 |
| Silver | $414.61 | $602.30 | $1,008.80 |
| Gold | $524.96 | $795.96 | $1,158.10 |
| All Anthem plans | $277.59 | $541.16 | $1,158.10 |
Two things stand out. Anthem’s $541 median runs about $150 a month below the $691.56 national median for age-40 individual plans across every carrier in the file. And that $277.59 catastrophic plan, in New Hampshire, is the lowest age-40 individual premium in the entire national dataset.
Catastrophic plans are restricted, though. They are generally limited to people under 30 or those with a hardship or affordability exemption, and no premium tax credit can be applied to them. For most shoppers the realistic floor is the $323.59 bronze plan.
New Hampshire is Anthem’s cheapest state across the board and Wisconsin its most expensive, with gold plans there reaching $1,158.
What you actually pay after subsidies
The sticker prices above matter more in 2026 than in any year since 2020, because the enhanced premium tax credits enacted in 2021 expired on December 31, 2025 and had not been restored as of September 2026.
KFF reports the average monthly net premium payment across all marketplace enrollees rose 58%, from $113 in 2025 to $178 in 2026, while the share receiving any tax credit fell from 92% to 87%. Average deductibles climbed 37% to $3,786 as people traded down to bronze. Effectuated enrollment dropped to roughly 17.5 million, down 4.8 million from 2025.
Older buyers took the worst of it. KFF puts the 2026 national average annual unsubsidized premium for a 60-year-old at $11,625 for the lowest-cost bronze plan, $15,914 for the benchmark silver, and $15,672 for the lowest-cost gold. Benchmark premiums rose 26% on average in 2026, the largest jump in eight years.
If your income is under 400% of the federal poverty line you still get a credit. Check ACA subsidy income limits, and if you land between 100% and 250% of poverty, a silver plan also unlocks cost-sharing reductions that quietly cut your deductible.
Is Anthem Good Insurance?
CMS scores marketplace plans 1 to 5 stars through the Quality Rating System. Anthem has six rated products in the PY2026 nationwide file, averaging 2.67 stars against a 3.41 national average across 298 rated products.
| State and plan type | Overall stars | Clinical quality | Member experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Hampshire HMO | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Ohio HMO | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Wisconsin HMO | 3 | 2 | 5 |
| Indiana HMO | 2 | 2 | not rated |
| Indiana POS | 2 | 2 | not rated |
| Missouri EPO | 2 | 2 | not rated |
Combined with the pricing, the story is coherent. Among the file’s largest issuers (those with at least 250 age-40 rate rows), Anthem has the second-lowest median premium in the country, behind only Ambetter’s South Carolina entity, and it scores below the national average on quality. That is a tradeoff, not a scandal, but it should be a conscious one. New Hampshire is both its cheapest state and its best-rated, which is the one place the tradeoff does not apply. The rating unit here is a product (one issuer, one state, one plan type), and Anthem’s California, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, and Kentucky books are not rated in this file because those states run their own exchanges.
Who Anthem Is Good For, and Who Should Skip It
Anthem works well if you live in one of its 14 states, you are price-sensitive, your doctors are in its network, and you rarely leave your service area. Its national brand recognition also means the BlueCard program gives you emergency and urgent access when traveling, even though routine out-of-network care is not covered on most of its individual plans.
Skip it if you split time between states, if you need a true individual PPO (Anthem files none in the five federal-platform states), or if you are in Indiana or Missouri and quality scores weigh heavily for you. And skip the brand-level thinking entirely if you live outside the 14 states, because the Blue Cross plan available to you is not Anthem.
Anthem vs. the Marketplace Specialists
Anthem is a legacy Blue plan with employer-market roots competing against carriers built specifically for the exchanges. Ambetter, Oscar, and Molina run narrower networks and reach far more states. Medica and SelectHealth compete regionally on provider depth.
The surprise in the CMS data is that Anthem undercuts most of them on price. Median age-40 premiums in the 2026 file run $541 for Anthem, $576 for Oscar Insurance Company, $616 for Molina Healthcare, $686 for Ambetter Health, and $704 for Medica. These are different state mixes, so it is not a like-for-like comparison in any one market, but the popular framing of Anthem as the expensive legacy option does not survive contact with the filings.
Anthem’s edge is scale, provider contracting leverage, and a price point genuinely below the national median. Its weakness is that the individual product is mostly HMOs with no out-of-network coverage, and the quality scores do not match the brand’s reputation.
The Bottom Line
Anthem individual plans cost $278 to $1,158 a month for a 40-year-old before subsidies in 2026, with a $541 median that undercuts the national median by roughly $150. It is one of 33 independent Blue Cross Blue Shield licensees, operating under the Anthem name in 14 states and under Wellpoint or other names elsewhere, so verify your state before you compare anything.
Then verify three things about the specific plan: that it is not a catastrophic plan you cannot use a subsidy on, that your doctors are in that exact network, and what the CMS star rating is for your state rather than for the brand. If a claim gets denied later, appealing a health insurance denial is a real and often successful process, and negotiating the bill is the fallback when it is not.