BCBS MA is a PUBLIC CHARITY heavily subsidized by the taxpayers of Massachusetts.

The public ought to be thoroughly disgusted by this news that “Blue Cross and Blue Shield paid William van Faasen 19.4 million dollars last year.”

The public is not comprised of idiots. We readily make the connection between the new “landmark” state law requiring every resident to purchase a private insurance product (the “products” that BCBS is the major seller of in “the Massachusetts market”) and Mr. Van F’s $19Mil golden parachute.

This is disgusting. Hundreds of thousands of our neighbors, relatives and co-workers in MA do not have health coverage because of the exhorbitantly high price of insurance. Now these people are being traumatized and made to feel like criminals by this new mandate law. Bravo Mr Van F. for creating the BCBS “Roadmap to Coverage/Roadmap to Insurance Mandates” project (BCBS started it 5 years ago) that brought us this misguided mandate law to purchase private insruance.

Huge sums of public money — MILLIONS AND MILLIONS that is urgently needed for other uses — is being wasted with the layers and layers of NEW HEALTHCARE BUREAUCRACY that has been created to enforce the mandate to purchase a private insurance product.

Public outrage will soon follow. Refusal to “comply” with the insurance mandate law, by both the insured, like me, who on principle will not fill out the new “1099-HC Tax Forms”, and those will remain uninsured, will be a part of that outrage.

To learn more about why we need to stop the MA mandate plan I recommend this excellent 10/12/07 report by a respected consumer group in California:

“Massachusetts Mandatory Health Insurance Purchase Law Is No Model for California”
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/pr/?postId=8676&pageTitle=Massachusetts+Mandatory+Health+Insurance+Purchase+Law+Is+No+Model+for+California

The whole idea of a Mandate is sickening and now we know why the Insurance Companies wanted a Mandate! We see that they have bought our State House!The people in charge are responsible for this mess. We can’t change the greedy insurance industry so we must change the lawmakers.Why aren’t we recalling all that voted for this chapter 58?? They have sold us down the river and I for one are outraged!We need not only a citizens revolt against this Mandate but a total recall on Beacon Hill!!!

$19.4 million! The adjective that comes to mind is: obscene! This only stands to highlight the fact that the non-profit status of Massachusetts health insurers is nothing more than creative accounting. My thanks to WBUR for reporting on this sweetheart deal. This should certainly help to fuel citizen anger over Chapter 58, the state’s phony health reform law, which is really nothing more than a thoroughly regressive poll tax. It is so comforting to know that while small businessmen are being squeezed until they cry uncle and the uninsured middle class citizens of the Commonwealth are having their pockets picked by the extortionists at the Connector, Mr. van Fassen will go into retirement with no fear as to how he will afford his meager rations of foie gras and Dom Perignon!

As a physician in private practice, I had a great deal of difficulty listening to this story about William van Faasen’s 19.4 million dollar deal, particularly the comment from Blue Cross implying that he deserved that much because he had reduced health care costs. Health insurance companies engage in such unfair and deceptive trade practices in their dealings with doctors that I can’t help but wonder what cost-reduction measures he might have implemented to earn that money. My practice has had such bizarre billing adventures that either the insurance companies are run by thieves or keystone cops. For example, one insurance company is currently sending payments for my practice to an unrelated entity. Then they tell us they can’t re-issue the payment to us until they get the money back from whomever they paid it to instead of us. Would that work for me? Can I use my insurance premium money to pay my visa bill and then just send them a letter saying I won’t be paying the premium until visa returns the money?

Several of the insurance companies, Blue Cross included, have been successfully sued in class-action suits for individual trade practices, yet they just go on and on. The result is that doctors leave medicine, there aren’t enough services to treat people, and patients don’t get enough time with their doctor.

Take for example another strange practice, “recoupment,” that is, they take back payments already made, stating they were made in error. Seems reasonable until you get a demand for $40,000 worth of payments because the insurance company associated the wrong number to the account. They assured us the claims would be paid over again when resubmitted, but on the second try (after hours of resubmission time, as each claim is under $100) they refused to pay over $1500 worth of claims, despite agreeing that we had done the work and submitted appropriately. Now let’s see, $1500 per doctor, over 30,000 doctors in Massachusetts, gee, that does make $19 million dollars seem pretty reasonable.

Sicko!!!

This story should serve not as a reminder that the rich are good at getting richer, but that health care is, for better and worse, a business. People are in it for money.

[...] plenty of opportunity for insurers to row harder, too. According to recent reports, Blue-Cross and Blue Shield chairman William C. Van Faasen was paid $16.4 million in retirement [...]