Why was I shocked when I saw two women sitting in front of Congress yesterday: one, Angela F. Braly, the Chief Executive of WellPoint and the other, Cynthia Miller, the company's chief actuary?
Each of them had pixie haircuts and innocent, even smarmy looks on their faces with Ms. Braly and Ms. Miller scripted in huge bold black letters on name cards in from of them - a deference, if you will, to the feminist movement that placed them there.
Braly's WellPoint, which owns Anthem Blue Cross, California's largest health insurer (and also mine for 25 years) is hiking premium rates on 800,000 individually insured members up to 39%. (My rate is set to rise 39% May 1 after a 10% hike last November.) Anthem had hoped to have these rate hikes in place by March 1 but consumer and legislative anger and push-back have delayed their hoped-for profits.
Each of the women defended their well-scripted corporate play card: such strident hikes were necessary to counter rising medical costs and an exodus of younger and healthier policy holders. (Wonder why ladies? No one can afford them?) And besides, California Insurance Commisioner Steve Poizner had not objected.
Well, there you go; a defense of making extra billions in profits on the lives of the trapped insured if I've ever heard one.
The very same week Anthem informed their insured via letter of the massive rate hikes, CEO Braly's company posted a $2.7 billion fourth quarter profit. The Los Angeles Times quoted the WellPoint executives as claiming their profits "were modest."
Maybe we can get the Obama administration to alter its so successful Yes We Can campaign phrase for the health care debate and blast it over the air-waves: How much is enough?
It's not that I enjoy seeing the traditional cabal of corporate heads, generally white, middle-aged and not-too-good-looking men, suited up and called before Congress to get bashed: Tabacco giants, auto-makers, bankers, all looking as if each knows their hand is in the billion dollar candy jar and they just got caught, and if they sit there a while and get shouted at they can go back to their unregulated, well-lobbied candy-jar operations.
But this time, it is women. Women who have these positions because other women were beaten and starved in jail to gain the right to vote; women who took decades to shout and legislate and educate the public that women should have equal rights to men.
So in the same year Hillary Clinton almost made it to the White House, WellPoint CEO and former Anthem legal counsel Angela Braly was making $1.1 million a year in salary along with $8.5 million in valued stock compensation.
She was apparently unconcerned that millions of Californians cannot afford her company's health care premiums and even those who can, still pay for most of their health care needs themselves because her company's deductibles are astronomical.
So what is her company's greedful logic? Let's raise them again!
The LA Times also reported that documents obtained by congressional investigators showed this same year that the company Braly heads paid 39 company executives $1 million or more and spent more than $27 million for 103 executive retreats in 2007 and 2008 -- and that some retreats were even attended by insurance agents and brokers.
We've come a long way, baby? Not by a long shot.
Of course, this is all the more horrific since Braly heads a company that brokers in human lives.
My cousin, 62, died 8 weeks ago because another health insurance giant delayed telling him that he needed a heart transplant for years. The week he died was the same week they informed him of this fact. I sat and heard my aunt, his 90 year old mother, cry and repeat over and over, "That insurance company killed my boy for money."
After all the obscene profiteering, I guess it comes down to this: You're a mother, Ms. Braly. So I ask you, How much is enough?
Janet Kinosian is a 25-year print journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, The New York Times Syndicate , Reader's Digest and People Magazine. She provides Media Consulting at www.janetkinosian.com.
Follow Janet Kinosian on Twitter: www.twitter.com/STWBYF4
Also just read your very informative column Witness to Fire. My father was also one of those who witnessed the fire.
That's why they've made sure that competition is OUT of any overhual plans in Congress.
Obama made a big deal about competition in many speeches.
But when it comes down to the wire, Congress will emphatically NOT do anything to allow competition in the insurance market.
And neither will your State legislatures ... which is why we have the State sponsored health insurance monopolies we have today.
In short, Federal or State governments are never going to allow real competition in the insurance market. NEVER.
The only way to get competition is to boycott them until they get the message.
WE create the competition.
If they want our business, they will capitulate on price/coverage.
If they do not want our business, we're better off paying for care out of pocket.
That's why they've made sure that competition is OUT of any overhual plans in Congress.
Obama made a big deal about competition in many speeches.
But when it comes down to the wire, Congress will emphatically NOT do anything to allow competition in thei insurance market.
And neither will your State legislatures ... which is why we have the State sponsored health insurance monopolies we have today.
In short, Federal or State governments are never going to allow real competition in the insurance market. NEVER.
The only way to get competition is to boycott them until they get the message.
WE create the competition.
If they want our business, they will capitulate on price/coverage.
If they do not want our business, we're better off paying for care out of pocket.
Boycott them.
Seriously. Arianna has the MOVE YOUR MONEY campaign but she never suggests people just boycott the insurnace companies.
Stop paying the premiums.
Hit them where it hurts ($$$$).
Trashing their offices would mean nothing to them.
They'll just jack up premiums to cover the damage.
Boycott them.
I'd like to boycott these companies, but with their ant-trust exemption or if someone has a pre exisisting condition the consumer really doesn't have a choice. Whatever happened to the republicants' belief in "free market competition"?
It's the only way we'll get true 'change'.
Congress is NOT going to do it (no matter who is in charge).
Other Peoples Money-Why Unhealthy People Mooch Off The Ones Who Live Their Lives Responsibly
American people have become accostomed to live unhealthy lifestyle and expect the medical profession to have a qucik high tech fix or a resolution with some expensive drug that was cooked in a labratory for their symptoms of poor life choices or being part of a blood line that carries a genetic predisposition. What ever the reason for their poor health- it is other peoples money that usually pays for the medical expense. Why should other people pay for someones poor life choices or their misfortune in being part of a bloodline that has a poor health history.
If you feel so compelled to minimize the cost of health insurance to the those addicted to sugar, fatty foods, alcohol, drugs, risky behavior or just plain stupidity, then why dont you organize a group to provide either health education as part of a health improvement program or provide payment for their increased health care premiums.....and just quit picking on companies that take the risks with Americans who are clueless in how to help themselves...
Warm regards,
Michael Winters
Thank you for your feedback....I do not need to be a health care worker to know that cancer is caused by continuous and harmful exposure to subsances in the enviroment-either by a person's ignorance or poor education. (Please read Daniel Golman's Book Enviromental Intelligence). As for infectiouds disease any competent health care professional will tell you that most of the time the person with the disease did not take proper precautions to protect themself from exposure...Bottom line when people take more responsibility for theirown wellness by taking preventative measures rather than leaving it up to the healthcare worker to fix it after there is a problem; maybe healthcare insurance would be less costly for everyone....
Warm regards,
Michael Winters
Seriously. Arianna has the MOVE YOUR MONEY campaign but she never suggests people just boycott the insurnace companies.
Stop paying the premiums
Why not?
Until you have no health care except what these companies try to bleed you with [and everyone is just a job loss away from it] perhaps you won't see the crisis for what it is. It's life and not what company to buy soda from. In my opinion, it's a disgrace that this great country is left with this abhorent mess of a health care system.
Health Insurance companies should be banned - who needs them? They just siphon off billions from the health system. But at this point, how would it be managed without them?
Congress is not going to do it.
What a crock, insurance companies don't tell you anything about your health, your doctor does.
Just like climate change and polar bears. Truth out the window, the ends justify the means.
Shouldn't that be a doctor telling them that?