Insurance Companies Are Cutting Their OWN Benefits: The Best of the Weekend

by Tim Foley

categories: Enemies of Reform, For Profit Insurance, The Uninsured and Underinsured

Published October 04, 2009 @ 10:10PM PT

Every weekend, I present the three articles or videos that best enhanced my own understanding of the myriad issues wrapped up in our national health care debate. All three selections this weekend made the list for one simple reason: much like the Spanish Inquisition, I don’t think anyone ever expected stories like these!

1.) Bloomberg, “WellPoint Cuts its Own Health Benefits as Recession Trims Sales”

In Will Ferrell’s celebrity-studded and satirical public service announcement, “Protect Insurance Companies,” actor Jon Hamme pointed out that health insurance companies needed to make millions and billions in profits... to pay for health insurance for their employees. Well, it turns out that’s not a joke. Given that WellPoint has also been at the forefront of creating “astroturf” consumer-friendly Web sites, ad campaigns and push polls to activate its customer base against health care reform, one could be forgiven for thinking this is but poetic justice.

The company will also raise deductibles and premiums for some of its employee health benefits, the Indianapolis-based insurer told workers in a memo today obtained by Bloomberg.

WellPoint, like its competitors, has seen health plan enrollment shrink this year as employers cut jobs and benefits amid the recession… In the memo from Randy Brown, WellPoint’s chief human resources officer, the company said it would lower its contribution toward worker premiums and raise deductibles in two of its three benefit plans. “Your cost per paycheck will probably increase,” the memo said. WellPoint has 42,000 employees.

(By the way, in case you’re wondering what the heck the picture on this post is, it’s a “Medical Data Loss Dress,” designed to incorporate private medical data that WellPoint carelessly left unsecured on its Web site for 13 months. Good times.)

Read the full article on Bloomberg’s Web site.

2.) Swampland, “Bill Frist on Health Bill: I'd Vote For It”

So let me get this straight. Former Senate Majority Leaders for the G.O.P. Bob Dole and Howard Baker not only have spoken in favor of health care reform (and endorsed a plan through the Bipartisan Policy Center that closely tracks the proposals in Congress), but now Bill Frist has, too? This would be the same Bill Frist who was not only one of the Republican Congressional leaders for years, but also was a heart and lung transplant surgeon? The one whose conservative credentials are so rock-solid he nearly ran for president last year? That Bill Frist?

And yet we’re thinking the chances of a Republican not from Maine voting for this same reform bill is between slim and none?

OK, just checking.

However, he strongly supports other aspects of the bill--most notably, its requirement that individuals be required to purchase coverage, if they do not receive health insurance through their employers or under government programs. And he also lauds the provisions that would eliminate practices that allow insurance companies to discriminate against people based on their health history, including pre-existing conditions.

Frist also faults some in his own party for injecting alarmism into the debate. "Clearly, the death panels and public plan arguments have been overblown," he says. Frist noted that Republicans themselves voted for a Medicare prescription drug bill that would have established a version of a public plan--with the government negotiating directly with drug companies--if private-sector competition had failed to materialize.

Read the whole blog post on Swampland.

3.) Nicholas Kristof, “Dad’s Life or Yours? You Choose”

There are so many basic injustices and indignities with the way our insurance industry operates, it’s hard to know where to begin. But clearly at the top of the list is the injustice of rejecting coverage for those with pre-existing conditions -- discriminating against the very population most likely to need health care, because they’re most likely to need care. Kristof today supplies a dramatic example where pre-existing conditions actually impeded two generations from getting the care they need and the preventative care they still might need.

Mr. Waddington has polycystic kidney disease, or PKD, a genetic disorder that leads to kidney failure. First he lost one kidney, and then the other. A year ago, he was on dialysis and desperately needed a new kidney. Doctors explained that the best match -- the one least likely to be rejected -- would perhaps come from Travis or Michael, his two sons, then ages 29 and 27.

Travis and Michael each had a 50 percent chance of inheriting PKD. And if pre-donation testing revealed that one of them had the disorder, that brother might never be able to get health insurance. As a result, their doctors had advised not getting tested. After all, new research suggests that lack of insurance increases a working-age person’s risk of dying in any given year by 40 percent.

“At the time David needed a transplant, the people closest to him couldn’t even offer a lifesaving donation -- for insurance reasons,” said Mr. Waddington’s wife, Susan.

Read the full column at NYTimes.com

[Programming note: This is my last blog post as the primary editor of this cause for Change.org. Thanks for reading! However, I’m leaving you in the more than capable hands of Gillian Hubble. I’ll be guest blogging in this space in the weeks and months to come, though not at my usual frequency. Whether you’re a health care reform skeptic or activist, we are truly in unprecedented times.  There simply has never been as good a chance of having a comprehensive health care reform bill passed by Congress and signed by a president. But stay vigilant and stay active -- we still have a long way to go, and much work to do to ensure it’s a bill we can all be proud of.]

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/plurimus/ / CC BY 2.0)