
{"id":8783,"date":"2010-01-21T10:35:30","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T18:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=8783"},"modified":"2010-01-21T10:35:30","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T18:35:30","slug":"shame-on-you-mother-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/01\/21\/shame-on-you-mother-blue\/","title":{"rendered":"Shame on you, Mother Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Bill Sommers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Recently, unsuspecting N.C. residents have found their mailboxes awash with Blue Cross Blue Shield mailings that shed manufactured crocodile tears on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153horror\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of a relatively small public program included in the Obama Health Plan proposal, calling it a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153vast expansion in the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s role,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while praising its own righteous stance for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153health care that works.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This mail-order crusade was predicted back in May, when Paul Krugman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s New York Times column \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Blue Double Cross\u00e2\u20ac\u009d noted that after private insurers had a cooperative photo-op with the president, BCBS of North Carolina, among others, began \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gearing up for a major smear campaign.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And so it has come to pass.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Their insulting insertion of the postcard mailing trick underlines BCBS\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reckless fear that any kind of competition is an attack on its profit margin; it also symbolizes the inability of most private health insurers to contribute to the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greater good against the morass of increasingly botched private health care providers and rising insurance premiums. BCBS\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s constant misrepresentation of the true goal of a public health-insurance sector has made the United States the negative model for health care when compared to so many developed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and developing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c countries. Despite its protestations, BCBS wants to keep that negative model alive and well for as long as it can.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, most of the private insurers like BCBS of North Carolina began raising their rates as Congress started the process of implementing a major overhaul of our failing system. The major reason is the fact that the insurance industry is under pressure from Wall Street to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce its profits. Small businesses suffer most from the insurance industry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c of which BCBS is a significant part. One small businessman in Columbia, Pa., for example, was told by his current insurance carrier that his workforce was becoming \u00e2\u20ac\u0153too old and very expensive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d after demanding a 160 percent increase in the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coverage. <\/p>\n<p>After receiving the first of the BCBS\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mailings, I wrote to their Durham office complaining about the mailings and the gross inaccuracies included therein. I shortly received a reassuringly bland letter from the project manager of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Member Experience and Customer Satisfaction.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d GEE! Among a litany of well-practiced positively stated negative pronouncements, one sentence seemed a summation of attitude and status:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s critical that North Carolinians understand how a government-run health plan and increased taxes could impact health coverage costs and choice. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re working to educate North Carolinians to do that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>GEE. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mother Blue Cross sitting on her Blue Shield telling all her North Carolina children to be quiet and go out and play while Mother Blue takes care of the problem. GEE WHIZ!<\/p>\n<p>But Mother Blue is a bit of a scoundrel. She forgets to tell us that BCBS has for many years been \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and currently is \u00e2\u20ac\u201ca full participant in the Federal Employees Health Benefits program (FEHB), a government-run health plan that is a model of the plan BC\/BS decries with such moral fervor. In it, the U.S. government pays between 60 percent and 70 percent of premium costs to the participating insurers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c BCBS included \u00e2\u20ac\u201c through the budget of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Under FEHB, BCBS offers \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fee-for-services\u00e2\u20ac\u009d plans in eight states, while in a slightly different mode offers HMO health participation in six states. <\/p>\n<p>Well, Mother Blue, how do you justify this immorality to your poor children? On the one hand you tell us that these awful government-run health plans are serious threats to the country while with the other hand \u00e2\u20ac\u201c unseen to your trusting children \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you are taking funds from the U.S. government hand over fist?<\/p>\n<p>PLEASE!<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nBill Sommers, a Fearrington Village resident, is a regular contributor to Chatham County Line, where this column first appeared.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Sommers Recently, unsuspecting N.C. residents have found their mailboxes awash with Blue Cross Blue Shield mailings that shed manufactured crocodile tears on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153horror\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of a relatively small public program included in the Obama Health Plan proposal, calling it a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153vast expansion in the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s role,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while praising its own righteous stance for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153health&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8783"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8785,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783\/revisions\/8785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}