Group Pickets Health Care Provider in 9-city Protest
WellPoint locked the lobby doors and police stood on guard. The protest was peaceful but pointed -- with participants blaming the insurance companies for current problems and accusing the president of breaking his campaign promise to bring real reform.

While some of us spent September advocating for single payer, the board of directors of Wellpoint spent the month relieving themselves of the stock of a company that they apparently believe is poorly management.

On September 2 John Cannon dumped 15,380 shares of Wellpoint. That same day Lori Beer dumped 197 shares. The next day Larry Glasscock dumped 13,000 shares and another 13,000 shares on September 17. On the 9th of September, Sheila Burke dumped 9,920 shares, and another 3,200 on the 14th. Kenneth Goulet observed the anniversary of 9/11 by dumping 22,000 shares and dumped another 3,377 on the 14th. On the first of October, Martin Miller dumped 238 shares of Wellpoint.

I pray the progressives wake up soon and come out of their collective slumber before we help the Democrats pass a health insurance bail out. The reforms championed two years ago, that rested largely on providing Americans with a Medicare-like plan, open to all takers, has morphed into Romney Care. While the centerpiece progressives envisioned on health care reform rested largely on federal intervention via program, the Democrats have cleary gone the less contentious route of a federal roll via regulation. The idea seems to be create a federal role, and hopefully tighten regulations later down the road, which is laughable.

Insurer's stock jumps after doubts arise on government health insurance proposal

WellPoint's stock price surged as the prospects for a new "public" health insurance plan appear to be fading.

Shares of the Indianapolis-based health insurance giant rose Monday -- a down day for the broader market -- in reaction to recent comments from the Obama administration that a public plan is not essential to health-care reform.
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Since I cannot read minds, I cannot say why Bayh is dragging his heals on health care. It may be that he is afraid on Republican TV ads. But it seems more likely that he is simply protecting his wife’s gig and as a member of the board of directors of Wellpoint.

Our good friends at Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan are doing their best to alert the people of Indiana to Bayh’s conflict of interest.

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?

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.

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.

Last week Wellpoint (the parent company of my own adopted parasite, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield) posted a first quarter net income which had gone down from the previous quarter, but not so much of a decline as Wall Street had expected.

WellPoint Inc.'s (WLP) first-quarter net income fell 1.3% Wednesday on sharply higher investment losses and amid continued enrollment declines, but the health insurer's strong operating performance offers further encouragement for the pressured industry.

I'm so relieved!

UPDATE: Wellpoint's grasstop campaign

WellPoint Makes Three Million Calls In Health-Reform Survey

The company placed three million automated calls. Of those, 142,000 connected and 66,000 people told the computer on the other end of the line that they’d be interested in learning more, WellPoint spokeswoman Cheryl Leamon told the Health Blog.

Because, ya know, the market is always the best -- and a business model of denying care for profit can always be fixed by tinkering round the edges! Fast Company (remember them? From the dot-com bubble?):

The $10 million Healthcare X PRIZE, organized in collaboration with the WellPoint Foundation and health benefits company WellPoint Inc., asks entrants to generate a 50% improvement in health value in a community of 10,000 people over a three-year period. "Health value" is defined as the combination of total cost and a community health index that measures factors like improved ability to climb stairs and reduction in emergency room visits.

I love the word "generate." Like, you know, the patients are just shoppers, or something. And the other, really beautiful part, is that they're proposing to experiment*, in real time on real people with real sicknesses and illness, so that they can win $10 million dollars. Who are the sickos, here, really?

Teams will have 18 months to plan their proposals.

Excellent! I'd say we can put off any legislative consideration for at least a year, then!

At the end of the planning period, five finalists will be selected to test their models in U.S. communities of 10,000 people. WellPoint and its affiliated health plans will collaborate with employers and health-care providers to set up test communities, and the finalists' results will be compared against a control group.

Can any doctors chime in and tell me if that's going to work? It seems to me the contest is trapped in a dilemma: (1) If they don't inform the communities, then they're unethical; but (2) if they do inform the communities, and especially if it gets out into the press and thence to the "control" community, they're asking for massive placebo effects. Yes?

But here's the kicker, the amazing bottom line for these people:

Wellpoint's Dr. Charles Kennedy, senior vice president for health IT speaking to ComputerWorld:

ComputerWorld: How will the billions of dollars help spur adoption, particularly when you consider many small hospitals and physician practices have not even started an EHR rollout?

This series is going to be resumed because part of passing single payer involves discrediting health insurance parasites.

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 temporarily stop enrollment and marketing of its Medicare Advantage, Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug and Prescription Drug Plan.

WellPoint Cutting 1,500 Jobs

NEW YORK -- WellPoint Inc. said Friday it will eliminate approximately 1,500 jobs, including 900 open positions and about 600 lay-offs.

Time to pass HR 676 and put these parasites out of their misery.

Unhealthy insurers

US health insurers, already feeling unwell at the prospect of a Barack Obama presidency, had their condition further downgraded this past week as the financial crisis hit earnings. While the patient has suffered a bit of a shock, the prognosis is better than the average 61 per cent drop over the past year in the shares of six leading managed-care companies would suggest.

WellPoint’s IT woes taking toll; St. Francis contract dispute just the latest problem involving tardy payments

A year of computer snafus boiled over Oct. 13 when the St. Francis hospital system declared WellPoint Inc. in breach of its contract because of habitually late payments.

Those computer problems already have helped to wipe out the Indianapolis-based health insurer’s expected profit growth for the year. And some analysts fear WellPoint will continue to lose customers and market share until the end of 2009.

WellPoint Agrees To Pay $11.8M to California Hospitals Over Health Insurance Policy Cancellations

Sits on Wellpoint's Board of Directors

Susan Bayh, wife of Senator Evan Bayh, sits on the board of directors of Wellpoint, a huge health insurance company. poputonian has an excellent run down of the history of Wellpoint.

Let's talk about corporate greed. It is worse than you thought. We know that these companies make money by collecting premiums and then denying care. The question is, money for who? Let's look at their insider trades:
Cigna's board of directors and chief corporate officers collectively dumped 129,499 shares of Cigna stock. I tried to add that up to what it would be in dollars, got as far as $17,342,224. That is in addition to their very high salary. How much health care could your municipality buy with $17 million dollars?

Insurers don't like to 'share'

The current mantra of those who support our private insurance model for health care is "shared responsibility." Their goal is to ratchet up the amount that individuals will have to pay for medical costs, by buying insurance policies that have higher deductibles, larger co-payments, and higher costs for prescription drugs. What "shared responsibility" is about is maintaining insurance company profits.

UnitedHealth CEO paid $13.1M in 2007

UnitedHealth Group Inc. CEO Stephen Hemsley received compensation valued at $13.1 million in 2007, down from the $15.5 million he got in 2006.

According to documents filed with the SEC, Hemsley received a base salary of $1.3 million in 2007, up from $1 million in 2006. He also got stock options awards valued at $8.1 million in 2007, less than the $11.3 million he got in 2006.

His compensation also included $3.6 million in cash incentives, up from $2.8 in the previous year.

Major insurance companies drop on sector woes

Although UnitedHealth Group reported a positive fourth quarter—including a 62% increase for its Ingenix database system business—the company’s stocks have since plummeted, partially because of an ongoing investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. On March 12, shares fell to a 52-week low, bottoming out near $36 after seeing prices as high as $60 in December 2007. ...