Via Avedon Carol, we find that Blue Cross has told regulators one thing and stockholders another. I guess they were too busy dumping stock to get their story straight.

From the Star Tribune:

"One victim used to sell health insurance.

Another is a retired deputy attorney general.

A third is a 93-year-old woman from West St. Paul.

All three were tricked into buying what they thought were health insurance policies that turned out to be empty promises, according to two lawsuits filed Wednesday by Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson.

Swanson accused two out-of-state companies, Consumer Health Benefits Association and Home Health America LLC, of "scamming Minnesotans citizens."

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Best reason yet for Single Payer

There's a charge that the insurance company pays and one that you pay and then there's the mystery money thats only charged to people without insurance or the wrong insurance. You can best believe that, unless you have the Cadillac of insurance, the amopunt you pay will be more than your insurance company and the mystery money will be outragious. It's a game they play to balance the books.

Conyers, Leahy Introduce Bill To End Health Insurers' Anti-Trust Exemption

John Conyers and some allies on the House Judiciary Committee have come up with a fabulous way to get the insurance industry in line - by threatening to remove their anti-trust exemption.

They want free market, let's give them some free market and see how they like it.

Health care reform and domestic violence

Rubber Hose

rescission is such a loathsome practice, i have no idea why the pro-reformers aren't highlighting it more. if you do the math, it means that if you're insured, you have roughly a 50% chance of losing your insurance if you're ever diagnosed with a massively expensive medical condition. it's insane. it means that half of us with insurance aren't really insured against something really bad happening. there's really no way to defend the practice.

[I know that the personal circumstances of the blogger who wrote this: She could really use some help. Thanks for anything you can give! --lambert]

Medicare agency orders Anthem parent to halt enrollments

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has ordered WellPoint Inc., parent company of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, to stop enrolling Medicare beneficiaries and marketing its plans to them for now due to "significant compliance problems."

Scienceblogger Zuska has recently been writing about her experience dealing with The Best Health Insurance System In The World!^TM

Zuska's mother resides in an assisted living facility, where a few weeks ago, her wallet was stolen, including her health insurance card. As a result, she was required to cancel her Blue Cross policy number and get a new card with a new number. In the meantime, it appeared to her health care providers that mom did not have health insurance. Merriment ensued.

"If the drug companies and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public interest is being left behind. "

So far it looks like the bill that will emerge from conference committee will mandate that everyone buy health insurance, will tax employer paid plans to subsidize private plans. It will have the effect of destroying the employer based system with no adequate replacement. This is the McCain plan and it was turned down by a landslide vote.

A public option is supported by the vast majority of Americans, a solid majority support a single payer system. We need to start asking question why a plan that was resoundingly defeated in the November 2008 election is somehow more pragmatic than a single payer plan that is supported by the majority.

A father's heartfelt open letter to Obama, as his health insurer will only pay for 4 of the 6 injections his diabetic daughter needs every day.

Until you tell me Mr. President what I am supporting I can not support you. I will not invest my energies to be taken for granted and dismissed or told to back off. I will not invest my energies in supporting bad legislation. I will support a strong public option. A platform you campaigned on.

via Mike the Mad Biologist

What do the insurance parasites contribute to our health care system?

via Alegre

It seems that AHIP's widdle feelings have been hurt. They feel that they have been unfairly attacked. For us it is a good sign. It means that they have been feeling the heat.

One reason I have advocated picketing insurance parasites and picketing their events is that people under attack often make mistakes. It is very difficult to maintain focus and when people are calling you blood sucking parasites and murder by spread sheet. Politicians are trained to handle this sort of thing, but trade associations and CEO's are more accustomed to working behind the scenes.

Keep up the pressure. It is only a question of time before they do something really stupid.

Baucus ‘spinning’ health care

As a former lifelong Republican I voted for Obama because he promised to take power from lobbyists and restore it to the American public, especially in areas of health care, energy and education reform. These areas need drastic changes, and thus far his personal efforts to promote such change has been pathetic. ...

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Also a reminder that finance is the center of all things:

From Mike the Mad Biologist's post Will The Public Options Become Romneycare?

> There's no reason why healthcare must be privatized.

Of course there is [...]

Health care is one-sixth of the US economy. A third of that goes into the operational overhead of private insurance. That's 5% of the US GDP that would go away if a real public plan were available, and if you think the financial meltdown last year was bad just watch what happens when that river of money to Aetna and the rest dries up.

Awhile back I wrote, trying to figure out how my adopted parasite had managed to have a better-than-(Wall-Street)-expected first quarter:

I have tried, and failed, to understand or find out what "disciplined pricing and operating improvements in senior and local group businesses and more favorable prior-period claims development" means. I'm especially curious about that "more favorable prior-period claims development" part. Sounds suspiciously like not paying old claims, to me. But you know how I am...

Dearie me, not suspicious enough, perhaps. Could this be part of what it means?

Max Baucus Must GO!

The so-called leader of healthcare reform in the Senate, Max Baucus (D-Mont.) earns $1,500.00 a day from the very industry he says he is trying to reform

Letter to the Helena Air

This Matters

For most businesses providing a good product is the way to make money. This isn’t as true for health insurance. The market “fails” in at least two ways in this industry. First, people don’t usually buy their own health insurance. It comes with their job. So the people who make the purchasing decision do not balance their own health against the cost. They balance someone else’s health. In a difficult and competitive business climate this results in the lowest bid having a huge advantage.

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Rangel: Health-Care Reform Needs $600 Million in New Taxes and Will Cost $1 Trillion

Now more than ever it is necessary to write letters to the editor and alert the public that this money is not to expand access to health care, it is to subsidise the failing business model of health insurance parasites.

Bara Vaida, National Journal

The health insurance industry is unpopular, a fact that is not lost on Democratic lawmakers. Polls show that Americans blame insurers more than any other part of the health care system for rising costs. CEOs of AHIP companies are now greeted by protesters, such as those who showed up outside the association's national policy forum in March at a downtown Washington hotel just days after Ignagni pledged to work with Obama and Congress. "AHIP, get off it! People over profit!" chanted the collection of protesters, which included Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y.

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To understand the financial stakes involved in the battle over U.S. health-care reform, it’s useful to keep two numbers in mind: 50 million and 119 million.

The first number is the approximate total of Americans without health insurance, a new market that the private health insurance industry is salivating to get its hands on. The industry’s hope is that the government will mandate that those Americans sign up for private insurance and offer subsidies for those who can’t afford to pay the premiums.

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Natasha Chart

Insurance companies make a lousy product that kills people and leaves Americans with lower life expectancies than people in 49 other countries. Their interests should stop mattering more than those of the people whose lives they wreck and whose entrepreneurial spirit they stifle.

Why would any educated society rely on a health care system that has a stated fiduciary responsibility to extract as much money from its customers while giving them as little care as possible?

- Comment by Harry Mangalam on Paul Krugman's blog

UPDATE: Coverage from WISH TV

Reform talk dominates WellPoint meeting

Dr. Rob Stone, a Bloomington physician who heads the advocacy group Hoosiers for a Common Sense Health Plan, called WellPoint and its industry the "biggest barrier" to affordable health care. Stone's group is for a single-payer health plan, such as Medicare for all.

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WellPoint director Bayh conflicted, activists say

WellPoint Inc. CEO Angela Braly faced pointed criticism of her company and of WellPoint Director Susan Bayh from a handful of shareholders at the health insurer's annual meeting this morning.

Two shareholders used a question-and-answer session to charge Bayh with a conflict of interest because her husband, Sen. Evan Bayh, will have a vote on health care reform legislation being drafted in Congress.

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