Healthcare Hullabaloo: Pop Warner

Oh the joys of Pee-Wee football. I can still hear the calls of a pint-sized quarterback echoing in my ears:

31- Blue - 31 – Blue – 59 – HIKE!

Oh wait – that’s not a midget QB – that’s an executive at California Blue Cross. They recently requested rate hikes as much as 59% for its subscribers.

Pity poor California BC/BS – they are blaming these rate hikes on increased expenditures for hospital care and prescription drug coverage.

Granted, both of these areas are way overpriced, and contribute to the uber-inflation in our health care system – which makes them easy scapegoats for Johnny Wong, head Spin Doctor out at California BC/BS. Mr. Wong also blames rising provider fees, greater use of medical services by its members, and, get this, “the fact that healthier people are dropping coverage during a bad economy,”

In other words, people who don’t have an immediate need for health care coverage are deciding that they can no longer afford it. So, instead of trying to make health insurance more affordable, they are just going to hose the people who have no choice but to pay these outrageous premiums.

Yes, Mr. Wong, health care expenditures continue to rise at an alarming rate. Tell you what – show us where hospital and physician fees, prescription drug costs, and other health care expenditures by your company have risen by 59% over the last 12 months, and we’ll grant you your rate hike. Otherwise, let’s have the good citizens of California run you and the other overpaid executives at California BC/BS out of the State on a rail. They’ll even throw ina good tar and feathering in order to send a clear message to executives at other abusive ‘non-profit’ health insurers. We’ll give you a week to gather your numbers – in the meantime, we’ll be gathering up some feathers.

Not so fast, pleads Mr. Wong - “Even with these rate increases, Blue Shield of California expects to lose tens of millions of dollars on its individual health care business in both 2010 and 2011”. So I ask Mr. Wong “What cost-saving measures are being undertaken by California BC/BS to make up that shortfall before you decided to announce that 59% rate hike?” You know things like cutting executive pay and benefits, and getting rid of non-essential employees like Spin Doctors?

As the regular readers of my blog will recognize, California BC/BS’s antics are just an attempt to make as much hay as possible while the sun is still shining, before 2014 when National Health Care Reform will put an end to their raping of the health care consumer

And they pay their Spin Doctors to come up with new and exciting justifications for their dirty deeds. And that’s just Wong.

Yes, boys and girls, in today’s world, you can’t spell ‘BC/BS’ without ‘BS”.

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