 This has got to be the most dishonest piece of corporate bull that I have seen in some time. Blue Cross wants a better bottom line and they're not ashamed of it. If you are a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Dakota policyholder you recently received a letter from your insurance overlord threatening that healthcare reform could be bad for you. Here is a copy of the letter from their website. Their attachment is here.I'm going to be blunt. This is disgusting, shameless, nauseating, and-pardon the pun-sickening. This letter constitutes a direct money grab by the blue cross. It would be funny if it weren't such a grossly blatant attempt to stop healthcare reform and get something that instead makes them more money. It would take a lot more typing than I have time for to knock this whole thing down. As smart as you guys are, I don't know that I need to do that for all of it, but I do want to look at their "reform" proposals and interpret them for you. BCBSND urges reform that will: 1. Eliminate coverage denials for pre-existing conditions, something we’ve long supported, as long as all North Dakotans are required to have health insurance. Read: We will only stop denying you coverage when you're forced to buy it from us. 2. Require all North Dakotans to have health insurance coverage with sufficient penalties to assure full coverage. Read: It has to cost you a lot of money if you want to not buy our product. Like, really a lot of money. 3. Provide substantial subsidies for low-income North Dakotans and for older North Dakotans. Read: We want the government to subsidize you as much as possible so that money goes directly to us. 4. Pay for subsidies honestly through general tax revenues rather than by taxing the cost of health insurance. Read:Don't tax us for charging an arm and a leg, tax rich people to pay for subsidies! 5. Allow health insurers to continue to offer young adults lower prices. Read:Allow Health insurers to continue to charge older and sicker people obscenely high prices 6. Establish state-regulated insurance exchanges that negotiate with health plans and allow shopping across a broad range of benefit levels. Read: Make sure the buying power is split up fifty ways so that it is as small as possible. 7. Require benefit levels that are comparable—not higher than what North Dakotans purchase today. Read: Don't make us pay for better care. Quality of care should never improve and thus cost us more money 8. Standardize Medicare payments except for geographic adjustment factors that represent real, measurable differences in the cost of running hospitals and medical clinics. Read:Medicare's rates should be more expensive. They're too efficient! 9. Pay higher Medicare rates for those who deliver higher-than-average quality of care. Read:Medicare should have to pay more so we don't have to. I actually agree with a few of the reforms they suggest. Medicare's rates do need to be fixed and their reimbursement model should be changed to reward patient outcomes. Everybody should be brought into the health insurance system. Labor unions that negotiated for better healthcare benefits shouldn't be penalized. Wealthier Americans should pay for the subsidies used to cover poor Americans. I don't disagree with these things, but it is clear that Blue Cross has one motive here: money. Any reforms that make them more money are reform efforts that they support. Anything that costs them more money is bad for America. I am seeking statements from our congressional delegation on what they think about this letter. I do have to wonder what this means though in regards to what's happening behind closed doors in Washington. Pomeroy just voted for the House bill. Dorgan has always been behind a public option. Conrad has signaled that he will-at minimum-vote for cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill(although not necessarily on the cloture motion on the bill itself), if not on final passage of the bill. I have to wonder if Blue Cross is realizing that if they don't do something drastic, their monopoly on the North Dakota health insurance market will soon end. I do think that there is a bigger point here that I want to explore in depth in a later post, but this is a perfect example of why corporations do not deserve to have constitutional rights. Blue Cross has the ability to send this letter to 90% of the policyholders in the North Dakota insurance market. why should I be forced to compete with that on a debate platform. We will always know what corporations want out of the deal. Money. That's what they are designed to do. They don't need to remind us that they want more money. This type of speech pollutes the debate to a poisonous degree. It oughtta stop. But that's a topic for a different post... UPDATE X1: I have received a statement from Senator Conrad. It's quite good. “Considering that a health reform bill in the Senate has not yet been unveiled, let alone analyzed, the letter sent by BlueCross BlueShield to thousands of North Dakotans appears to be completely premature, if not irresponsible. I would hope BlueCross would reserve judgment until there is a final bill. “Regardless of the considerable efforts by special interests from both sides of the debate, I am committed to fighting for real reform that lowers cost, expands coverage, and improves health care outcomes for all North Dakotans.”
You heard it here first. Kent Conrad officially calls Blue Cross irresponsible. [Editor: Greetings to all our friends from the front pages of Firedoglake and DailyKos.] UPDATE X2: Statement from Senator Dorgan: “Blue Cross Blue Shield sent this letter long before the Senate had a health care bill, so it was premature for them to make assumptions about how reform would affect the health care industry. We are just now reviewing the Senate’s bill, and a number of amendments will be offered during the debate to strengthen the bill, including my effort to put downward pressure on health care costs by allowing for the safe importation of prescription drugs. The numbers in this letter are certainly not based on a realistic review of a completed health reform bill.”
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