About Us

Health Coverage Insurance Services, Inc (KaiserHealthCoverage.com)is the leading independent California insurance agency. Health Coverage Insurance Services, Inc has been providing California residents with health insurance solutions since 1997.

Health Coverage Insurance Services, Inc (KaiserHealthCoverage.com) is a full-service agency representing all the major health insurance carriers in California. As a Kaiser Permanente Agency, we’re in a unique position to give you superior service.

With our extensive background in the underwriting process and our key contacts at Kaiser Permanente, we can solve problems that may arise during your application process. We're routinely able to get our clients lower premiums, and we're always here to help you get claims paid. Regardless of which carrier you choose, we want you to get the most out of your health plan. And we want to keep providing you with excellent service after you've enrolled in a plan.

Because your health is too important to trust to a non-professional, all Health Coverage Insurance Services, Inc (KaiserHealthCoverage.com) representatives are licensed insurance agents.

Health Coverage Insurance Services, Inc (KaiserHealthCoverage.com) welcomes clients from all walks of life. We've helped countless individuals get their own health insurance plans, and we've managed multi-million dollar portfolios. Health Coverage Insurance Services, Inc (KaiserHealthCoverage.com) has also set up benefits programs for large corporations and non-profit organizations.

Our goal is to give you excellent service to help you meet your health insurance needs — whether we meet face-to-face, over the phone, or online.

Why apply for Kaiser Permanente through Us?

Health insurance premiums are filed with and regulated by your state's Department of Insurance. Whether you buy from Health Coverage Insurance Services, Inc (KaiserHealthCoverage.com), your local agent, or directly from the health insurance company, you'll pay the same monthly premium for the same plan. This means that you can enjoy the advantages and convenience of shopping and purchasing your health insurance plan through Health Coverage Insurance Services, Inc (KaiserHealthCoverage.com) and rest assured that you're getting the best available price.

We are going to there for you even after you get approved for health insurance. After you get your coverage if you have any questions regarding claims, prescriptions drugs, finding a provider or anything else that might come up.

Health Coverage Insurance Services, Inc
KaiserHealthCoverage.com
PoBox 9417
Santa Rosa, CA 95405-9417

Phone: 800-569-1156
Fax: 800-569-1156

About Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente evolved from industrial health care programs for construction, shipyard, and steel mill workers for the Kaiser industrial companies during the late 1930s and 1940s. It was opened to public enrollment in October 1945.

The organization that is now Kaiser Permanente began at the height of the Great Depression with a single inventive young surgeon and a 12-bed hospital in the middle of the Mojave Desert. When Sidney Garfield, MD, looked at the thousands of men involved in building the Los Angeles Aqueduct, he saw an opportunity. He borrowed money to build Contractors General Hospital; six miles from a tiny town called Desert Center, and began treating sick and injured workers. But financing was difficult, and Dr. Garfield was having trouble getting the insurance companies to pay his bills in a timely fashion. To compound matters, not all of the men had insurance. Dr. Garfield refused to turn away any sick or injured worker, so he often was left with no payment at all for his services. In no time, the hospital's expenses were far exceeding its income.

Prepayment System is Born
Enter Harold Hatch, an engineer-turned-insurance agent. Hatch suggested that the insurance companies pay Dr. Garfield a fixed amount per day, per covered worker, up front. This would solve the hospital's immediate money troubles and, at the same time, would enable Dr. Garfield to emphasize maintaining health and safety rather than merely treating illness and injury. Thus, "prepayment" was born. For the princely sum of five cents per day, workers were provided this new form of health coverage. For an additional five cents per day, workers could also receive coverage for non-job related medical problems. Thousands of workers enrolled, and Dr. Garfield's hospital became a financial success.

As the aqueduct project wound down, Dr. Garfield prepared to leave his desert hospital and start a solo practice in Los Angeles. But he got a call from another industrialist. This time, the problem was providing health care to 6,500 workers and their families at the largest construction site in history--the Grand Coulee Dam.

Excited by the possibilities, Dr. Garfield put his solo practice plans on hold. He turned the existing run-down hospital into a state-of-the-art treatment facility and recruited a team of doctors to work in a "prepaid group practice." The method again was a smashing success and a big hit with the workers and their families. But as the dam neared completion in 1941, it seemed once again that the grand experiment was reaching an end.

In the Shipyards
Once again, however, history intervened. America's entry into World War II brought tens of thousands of workers--many of who were inexperienced and in poor health already--pouring into the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, Calif., to meet the nation's demand for big Liberty Ships, aircraft carriers, and the like. Now, Henry J. Kaiser had the problem: How to provide health care for this teeming mass of 30,000? Kaiser was convinced that Dr. Garfield could solve his problem, but it took some special wrangling--the surgeon was already scheduled to enter active duty with his U.S. Army Reserve unit in just a few weeks.

But at Kaiser's request, President Franklin D. Roosevelt released Dr. Garfield from his military obligation specifically so he could organize and run a prepaid group practice for the workers at the Richmond shipyards. And so, Dr. Garfield and his innovative health care delivery system came to the San Francisco Bay Area, and formed the association with Kaiser that would imbed itself in the organization and continue until the present day.

Kaiser Permanente Comes Into Its Own
When the war came to an end, the shipyard workforce fell from 90,000 to just 13,000 employees in only a few months. Only about a dozen of the 75 members of the medical group remained. But Dr. Garfield wanted to keep practicing his new form of health care delivery, and Kaiser wanted the plan to continue as well. Therefore, on October 1, 1945, the Permanente Health Plan officially opened to the public. In 10 years, enrollment surpassed 300,000 members in Northern California. In these early years, the success of the health plan was largely the result of support from unions. Two unions--the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union and the Retail Clerks Union--were the driving force behind bringing the health plan to Los Angeles.

In 1952, the name of the Health Plan and the Hospitals was changed from Permanente, which some felt had little meaning outside the organization, to Kaiser, which had high recognition nationally because of Kaiser Industries and Henry J. Kaiser himself. The medical group chose to keep the Permanente name, in part to clarify that they were not employees of Henry J. Kaiser.

Thus, the organization known in modern times as Kaiser Permanente was born. We are still a working partnership of two organizations: the not-for-profit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals, and the Permanente Medical Groups.

Fast Facts about Kaiser Permanente

Founded in 1945, Kaiser Permanente is the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plan, serving more than 8.6 million members, with headquarters in Oakland, Calif. It comprises:

• Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.
• Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and their subsidiaries
• The Permanente Medical Groups.

At Kaiser Permanente, physicians are responsible for medical decisions. The Permanente Medical Groups, which provide care for Kaiser Permanente members, continuously develop and refine medical practices to help ensure that care is delivered in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

Kaiser Permanente’s creation resulted from the challenge of providing Americans medical care during the Great Depression and World War II, when most people could not afford to go to a doctor. Among the innovations it has brought to U.S. health care are:

• prepaid health plans, which spread the cost to make it more affordable
• physician group practice to maximize their abilities to care for patients
• a focus on preventing illness as much as on caring for the sick
• an organized delivery system, putting as many services as possible under one roof