Managed Behavioral Health Plans 2008

The last time Psychiatric Practice and Managed Care published a list of the 10 largest managed behavioral health care organizations was in August 2001. At that time the alphabetical list looked like this:

In March the newsletter Psychotherapy Finances published a list of the top 20 managed behavioral health plans based on lives covered. Half of the plans listed seven years ago have disappeared altogether. OptumHealth Behavioral Solutions, which wasn't even on the 2001 list, is now the largest plan, reportedly covering 43 million lives. (Optum appears to be a behavioral health program offered as part of United HealthCare.)

Here's the entire list in alphabetical order with the number of lives covered as reported by Psychotherapy Finances:

A couple of caveats about the new list: Some of these companies may offer only employee assistance programs (commonly referred to as EAPs) or work life products rather than full behavioral health care, and the information on the number of lives covered in all likelihood comes from the companies' marketing departments.