Long-time Minnesota Insurance Provider Makes Large-Scale Lays Offs

Growing up in Minnesota there are some things I remember vividly.  My Mom taking me to all my dentist and doctor checkups is one of those things.  I suppose it's because she was so regimented about it.  She had three kids to deal with and she still kept us all on schedule for our regular checkups.  She was the Queen of keeping it all organized, making sure we never missed one and wrangling all of us to those appointments...all while working as an Executive with an already busy schedule.

You would think I would never know anything about the insurance we used or how it worked.  But my Mom was always letting me know how it worked, showing me the insurance cards and even having me fill out some of the paperwork.  I think that was two-fold.  She wanted to teach her kids life skills, but she was also a busy woman and needed a little help.

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So that's why when I heard the news about Medica, the Minnetonka-based insurance provider, laying off 6% of it's workforce, I thought I'd never heard of them.  Then I looked into them and their history.  They were originally founded in 1975 by a group of doctors and were then called the Physicians Health Plan.

That's the name that was emblazoned on the health cards my Mom used to show me!  It brought back a surge of memories and made it even more sad to hear that the company was having to make cuts.  The Medica name was taken on in 1991 after a merger with another insurer.

The layoffs will affect 162 workers.  Medica shared the following in a statement:

“We made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce to align our resources with business priorities."  They went on to explain, "People are at the heart of our organization, and we are grateful for the contributions of our impacted employees and are supporting them with severance payments, outplacement services and other benefits as they look for their next opportunity.”