Letter from Ray McCaskey

Dear Fellow Employee:

For more than 65 years, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) has remained dedicated to earning and maintaining the trust of the people it serves. This unswerving commitment has created for our company an enviable reputation that helps us succeed in the marketplace. Our customers know our brand and what it represents. They know that our company is worthy of their trust.

That is important because HCSC is in the trust business. Yes, we market health and life insurance products and services, but we cannot possibly succeed unless we maintain our reputation and continue to earn the trust of consumers, employers, providers, regulators, bankers and vendors.

It takes a great deal of time and effort to reach the level of trust that our company enjoys today. But trust and reputation are fragile. They can be destroyed practically overnight. All too frequently, the newspaper headlines remind us of just how quickly a company’s reputation can be severely damaged. These tragic situations teach us how important it is for a company to instill in its work force at all levels a deep sense of responsibility for decisions and actions and how important it is for us not to become complacent about compliance.

Our Compliance Program and the commitment that each HCSC and subsidiary employee makes to follow the Code of Business Ethics and Conduct and to take personal responsibility for his or her decisions and actions strengthen HCSC's trustworthiness and enhance HCSC's reputation.

The Code provides you with a guide to many situations that you might encounter in day-to-day business, but it cannot possibly address every situation in which you may be required to make an ethical decision. That is why it is also important for you to understand and have the ability to put into action HCSC's core values of integrity, responsibility, mutual respect and corporate citizenship.

These values and all the elements of the Compliance Program are fully supported by the members of our Board of Directors and executive leadership team. In fact, all board members and senior executives actively participate in the annual Corporate Compliance training sessions just as all employees do.

Since the Company was founded 1936, its employees have built HCSC’s reputation. It is a reputation that will endure and grow because of your efforts and the commitment of your fellow employees to achieve a high level of ethics and integrity every day.

Sincerely,

Raymond F. McCaskey
President and Chief Executive Officer
Health Care Service Corporation

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