Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey will lay off 242 employees by April 26. A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing confirmed this. The cuts slice away nearly 5% of the company’s U.S. workforce.
Workers at the Newark headquarters will lose their jobs. So will staff at a site in Hopewell. Most learned Monday that their positions vanished as part of a restructuring.
Per NJ.com, spokesman Thomas Wilson said the company faces “unprecedented financial challenges due largely to higher medical costs and utilization across all lines of business.” Medical expenses keep climbing. Wilson added that despite reducing operating costs by $275 million, “our current cost structure is simply not sustainable in this environment and we have a responsibility to our customers and members to ensure the long-term financial strength of the company.”…