Why Are Some People More Authentic Than Others?

Yesterday, 6 protesters were arrested outside UnitedHealth Group headquarters in Minneapolis for blocking the entrance and refusing to leave during a demonstration. Here's some video of the arrests:


Watch Six Arrested For Stopping UnitedHealth "Business-As-Usual" in News  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Dawn Smith, the brain tumor victim who's struggles to get CIGNA to cover her treatments have become national news, is headed to the headquarters of CIGNA CEO Ed Hanway in Philadelphia, to get some answers on why she was denied coverage. She is live-blogging the trip and has some video on her site as well.

Stacie Ritter is also headed to confront Ed Hanway at his mansion:



Health Care For America Now has transformed the main homepages of UnitedHealth, CIGNA and WellPoint into virtual crime scenes, and they are mobilizing people to visit the headquarters of all these corporate bad actors with yellow police tape and declare them actual crime scenes. There are dozens of events in over 60 cities scheduled.

It is true that these events, scattered throughout the country, have been organized by health care advocacy groups. Of course, throughout the month of August, corporate front groups organized around town hall meetings, busing in folks from out of town and preparing them with talking points and rules to disrupt the events. Yet, in the eyes of the traditional media, only one of these two actions are seen as authentic:

For several months, HCAN—a national coalition of religious groups, community organizations, unions, senior citizen groups, health care professionals, and consumer advocates—has been organizing polite demonstrations, rallies, and public forums, trying to put faces on an industry that has spent multiple millions of dollars lobbying against reform, while angry protests at town meetings swelled August’s big national story. On Sept. 22, HCAN sponsored about 150 demonstrations at various insurance company headquarters around the country. The Los Angeles Times did not bother to report about the several hundred demonstrators at WellPoint’s California subsidiary office, located a few blocks from the newspaper’s office. Nor did The Philadelphia Inquirer note those who descended that day on CIGNA, nor The New York Times those outside UnitedHealth in midtown Manhattan.

The HCAN rallies did attract print and broadcast coverage in dozens of cities, but most reporters treated them as isolated local events rather than components of a nationally coordinated protest (its slogan, “Big Insurance: Sick of It”) and a burgeoning grassroots movement [...]

With Congress debating extensive health care reform, and companies like CIGNA, WellPoint, and UnitedHealth major protagonists, the organizers supposed that their protests would dramatize the exorbitant profits of the insurance industry and the imposing compensation they pay top executives (UnitedHealth’s Hemsley made $57,000 per day last year) while millions of Americans go without insurance or bankrupt themselves with medical bills.

HCAN was mistaken.

“At a certain point,” Indianapolis Star senior editor Jenny Green told us, the demonstrators are “not adding to the debate. They’re just one side saying exactly what you’d expect them to say.”

Her colleague, Greg Weaver, the Star’s deputy public service editor for business, maintained that the raucous town meetings of August, dominated by conservative activists shouting down Democratic Congressmembers, were newsworthy because they “are more of a public forum where you have many sides of the debate, whereas at the [HCAN] protest [at WellPoint CEO Bray’s house] you have only one side of the debate.”

“I did not think the protest at [Cigna CEO] Hanway’s house was news,” Philadelphia Inquirer business reporter Jane Von Bergen told us. “It was a staged event. It wasn’t real news. I avoid them. I can’t stand them. They don’t add anything. They don’t teach anything. If they go to his house, we don’t learn anything more about the health care debate.” The protest was “too manufactured,” said Von Bergen. “Just a bunch of people going blah-blah-blah.”

By contrast, said Von Bergen, who covered the rowdy town meeting in August where right-wing activists confronted Sen. Arlen Specter, the news value of that event was “readily apparent.” “It involved public figures”—members of Congress. So political reporters picked up the story.

Isn’t Hanway a public figure? we asked. He’s well known in the business community, she said, but not among the general public—a condition that HCAN is trying to change, but can’t do if the media won’t cover their events.

This is a revealing set of quotes, showing the true orientation of corporate-run media. They are willing to blind themselves to the corporate front groups who organize town hall meetings, but call demonstrations of insurance companies "staged events." This is not the work of a neutral arbiter in the debate; it looks more like one class is being protected while the other is being savaged.

I don't know what the value of street protests are in the digital age. But I certainly know they have little value if they go unreported. Apparently such protests can get coverage, but only if they feature people with tea bags attached to their hats and guns in their side holsters.

Closing In On The Insurance Industry

Lots of groups are taking action against the insurance industry and their attempts to get a forced market for themselves and increase their profits at the expense of their customers.

Health Care For America Now has a new ad spotlighting Stephen Helmsley, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, and his $57,000-an-hour lifestyle, contrasted against the thousands of families who have experienced a medical bankruptcy:



In connection with that, SEIU is encouraging supporters to take out Craigslist ads seeking to rent a room in an insurance company CEO mansion. They have the Craigslist sites for Philadelphia (CIGNA's Edward Hamway), Minneapolis (UnitedHealth's Stephen Helmsley) and Indianapolis (WellPoint's Angela Braly), and sample "room for rent" ads to work from. A sample:

Bankrupt Mother of Two, Seeking Room @ Insurance CEO Mansion

I'’m seeking a room to rent in Cigna CEO Ed Hanway’s $13.6 million dollar mansion. (We'’ll take a room in one of his three beach homes, too.) My family would be very quiet and courteous housemates, and given the size of Ed's mansion, he won't even hear us! I'll be bringing along my two twin girls, both of whom were diagnosed with cancer at the age of four. CIGNA is refusing to pay for the human growth hormone they need to grow properly - and the out-of-pocket expenses for this treatment are…

This is the Craigslist ad of Stacie Ritter of Philadelphia, who is literally holding a protest outside Ed Hamway's home as we speak, standing outside until she gets the care she needs from CIGNA.

MoveOn member Dawn Smith is faced with a similar struggle from CIGNA. They raised her prescription drug costs for her treatable brain tumor by 10,000%. She is writing to CIGNA to seek answers, and you can sign her letter.

What makes you think you can treat sick people this way? When will you stop doing this to me and the thousands of people like me who are suffering? And if you solve this latest problem, how do I know you won't do this to me again next week--that you're actually changing your ways and not just trying to make your PR problem disappear?

Please answer these questions. I need to know, for the sake of my health and my life. Many others have signed this letter too, to support me and make sure I get answers.

The truth is starting to leak out. Even the traditional media is covering stories about insurers denying coverage by calling a broken wrist a pre-existing condition. This is an industry that is doing whatever it can to maximize their profits, even though they know a public option wouldn't bankrupt them. The more people understand how the industry works, the easier it will be to get a health bill that works for all of us.

Keith Olbermann Takes On United Health Group

Last night, MSNBC's Countdown focused its lens on Stephen Hemsley and United Health Group, someone we've covered extensively at Sick For Profit. Keith Olbermann covered all of the greatest hits of one of the nation's largest insurers, who have encouraged their employees to attend protests against health care reform and distributed talking points opposing the public health insurance option. But he also took a look at the company's efforts to gouge their customers:

One of the nation’s largest health insurers has agreed to pay $50 million in a settlement announced today after being accused of overcharging millions of Americans for health care.

The New York attorney general’s office launched an investigation after receiving hundreds of complaints about Oxford Insurance and its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, which claims to rely on “independent research from across the health care industry” to determine reimbursement rates. In actuality though, it relies on Ingenix, a research firm owned by UnitedHealth Group.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says Ingenix has been manipulating the numbers so insurance companies pay less. In a just-released report, he contends that Americans have been “under-reimbursed to the tune of at least hundreds of millions of dollars.” Although UnitedHealth Group and Oxford Insurance were the only entities investigated, other major insurers use Ingenix, including Aetna, CIGNA and WellPoint/Empire BlueCross BlueShield.

Olbermann noted that United Health Group owns the Lewin Group, the supposedly non-partisan research outfit often cited by conservatives in the health care debate. He discussed CEO Stephen Hemsley's backdated stock options, showering illegal gifts on himself and his executive cronies. And he mentioned that, despite all this, despite United Health Group's long record fighting against the little guy, their efforts to oppose reform to this day, they still have a seat at the table, even in the White House:

Olbermann: President Obama is now asking United Health Group for advice on how to reform health care. He met with Hemsley twice this May. On June 1st lead Senators on health care asked Senator Kent Conrad to come up with an alternative to the public option. Three days later Senator Conrad met with Hemsley and top United Health Group lobbyist Simon Stevens.

"Conrad has since (that meeting) led an effort to create nonprofit medical cooperatives...with less heft than a proposed national plan, the state medical cooperatives would pose a far weaker competitive threat to private insurers." Conrad said the idea of co-ops came out of conversations in my office. Senator Conrad's office told Countdown "You're barking up the wrong tree. Co-ops were not discussed. The Senator met with them for 15 minutes to discuss care coordination and how that could lead to both cost savings and better health care outcomes."

Investment News reports the public option would benefit insurerers if it handled the core of the cost of care coodination. "Only the largest insurers, such as Aetna Inc., Wellpoint Inc. and United Health Group could do that".

It's a great piece, laying bare how a large insurance company makes their money off denying care, uses their power and influence to ensure that any reforms wind up in their favor, and take humongous profits in the process. He even used some of our Sick for Profit footage in his piece.

Take a look.

Insurers Turn Out Their Own

The Los Angeles Times has the latest about the insurance industry's efforts to game health care reform legislation, which seem to be working. Most of the substantive benefits come from the legislation being written in the Senate Finance Committee, which can be overcome simply by bypassing that committee. More troubling are their public efforts to demonize the public option, for which insurers have marshaled the manpower of their own employee base.

One of the Democratic proposals that most concerns insurers is the creation of a "public option" insurance plan. The industry launched a campaign on Capitol Hill against it, grounded in a study published by the Lewin Group, a health policy consulting firm that is owned by UnitedHealth Group. The lobbyists contended that a government-run plan, which would have favorable tax and regulatory treatment, would undermine private insurers [...]

Leading insurers, including UnitedHealth, urged their employees around the country to speak out. Company "advocacy hot line" operations and sample letters and statements were made available to an army of insurance industry employees in nearly every congressional district.

Some insurers supplemented the effort with local advertising, often designed to put pressure on specific members of Congress. Late in the spring, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina -- the home state of several conservative Blue Dog Democrats -- prepared ads attacking the public option.

United Health Group in particular has been active in using its employees to rally support against a public option. Even when they denied that they invited employees to attend right-wing tea party protests, they acknowledged that their talking points read as follows:

Our company is very concerned that a government-run health plan would be a road block to meaningful health care reform. It would significantly increase costs for individuals and families, would add billions of dollars in new liabilities to the federal budget, would break down the current health care system upon which more than 160 million Americans rely, and would violate the President's commitment that those who like their current coverage can keep it.

That anyone would listen to a health insurance behemoth with a vested interest in maintaining the viability of their business is odd enough in itself. But in addition, these talking points are incorrect. The CBO has scored a strong public option in isolation and found that it would save $150 billion dollars over ten years, and that's just to the federal budget. The real savings would come to individuals who would be able to choose a plan without large administrative costs and without a significant portion of their premiums going to company jets and balloon payments of compensation and stock options to CEOs. If insurers are so adept at providing quality health coverage, and the federal government so bumbling that their option would add billions to the federal budget, then they should have nothing to fear from such a plan. The fact that UnitedHealth and their cohorts in the insurance industry have mobilized 50,000 employees (and I wonder if they have a choice in their mobilization) to contact lawmakers and kill the public option shows that they fear it - and would rather create a forced market for their services that individuals would actually have to buy at risk of violating the law.

Insurers may be confident that they will reap a "bonanza" from the legislation, but they haven't counted on regular people mobilizing on their own. Supporters of the public option have raised nearly $400,000 to back the 60-plus members of the House who will not vote for a bill with anything less. And the White House is determining how to pass that with a simple majority in the Senate.

Insurance companies have an army of lobbyists and are turning out their own employees to try and claim a monopoly over your health. But this fight is not over.

United Health Group Would Like You To Attend A Tea Party

United Health Care is one of the largest health insurers in America, covering 29.5 million individuals and over 70 million including employer-based coverage, according to recent securities filings. They are part of the cartel of insurance companies that hold regional dominance over the individual marketplace and restrict choice for consumers. But they claim to support health care reform. Right there in big bold letters on their own website.

This summer will be a critical time in the debate over how to improve health care in the United States. As the nation’s leading health and wellbeing company, trusted by over 70 million Americans to fund and manage their care, we are actively and constructively engaged in this effort.

UnitedHealth Group has a responsibility to be actively contributing ideas and practical solutions to this debate. As citizens of this nation, we each have a responsibility to remain informed and engaged on a subject so important to us all.

We are pleased that you are here and we encourage you to take advantage of the resources and tools provided on this website to better educate yourself and to make your voice heard.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Responsibly and actively contributing ideas and solutions. That's the claim. How can that be reconciled with this?

Last week, UnitedHealth Group--the second largest health insurance company in the country--sent out a letter to its employees urging them to call UHG's United for Health Reform Advocacy Hotline to speak with an advocacy specialist about health care reform. The advocacy specialist, according to the letter, is there to help UHG employees write personalized messages to elected officials, and to arm them with talking points to use at local events in order to better oppose the public health insurance option.

TPM has obtained the letter, which you can read here, but a UHG advocacy specialist was not willing to provide TPM with a copy.

However, a source who's insured by UHG--and who also obtained the letter--called the hotline on Tuesday and says the company directed him to an events list hosted by the right wing America's Independent Party, and suggested he attend an anti-health care reform tea party sponsored by religious fundamentalist Dave Daubenmire, scheduled for today outside the office of Blue Dog Rep. Zack Space (D-OH).

Giant insurers like United Health Group see value in enabling right-wing shriek-fests. They'll either derail reform, and keep a status quo that earned the CEO $124.8 million in 2005, or get a workable, sham "reform" without a public option that would essentially funnel government subsidies to their company. They have a good racket going, and they want to keep it.