A reader came by the other day to vent about two mailings he had recently received from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.
The first one informed him that his health insurance rates would be going up by more than 10 percent next year. Just as he was getting over that, another flier arrived from Blue Cross, this one urging him to send an attached post card to U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, demanding that she vote against any health-care reform bill that includes a "public option."
"The whole idea behind a public option is that the competition might help keep insurance rates under control," sputtered our visitor, who preferred anonymity. "Yet here you have an insurance company raising my rates with one hand, while with the other trying to get me to badger Kay Hagan to vote against something that might help keep costs down. And how much of that rate hike is due to these kinds of lobbying expenses?"Turns out our caller wasn't the only one turned off by this one-two punch, which was a little like the proverbial youth murdering his parents and then begging for leniency on the grounds that he was an orphan. Cries of outrage have gone up all over the state from policy holders complaining that their premium dollars were funding a self-serving corporate campaign.
The thing has even backfired. Some policy holders have phoned Hagan's office to voice support for the public option. Others have altered the post card and sent it along with the opposite of the intended message. Blue Cross acknowledged that the timing of the two back-to-back mailings may have been "unfortunate."
Ya think?
No comments:
Post a Comment