Geez, this article is pretty unflattering and ungrateful towards WellPoint.

Is this the thanks it gets for writing up the No Insurer Left Behind bailout legislation, aka Obama's Big Win? Don't people understand how many LIVES WellPoint saved?

This sort of nitpicking, purist criticism is why it's said that no good deed goes unpunished!

For profit Health Insurance is vaporware promulgated by vicious, cold-blooded killers and terrorists, who kill their own insured legally (by contract) and illegally (breaking or ignoring or evading legal contracts).

Moreover, for profit Health Insurance is part and parcel of the whole Corporate Fascist scam since they contract largely to employers, who fire the employees when they get sick, thus negating the contracts and saving the insurers claims. They also give cut-rate deals to the executives while the employees get virtual discounts on the benefits that they peddle to their employees at this or that remuneration value.

One third of all for profit Health Insurance premiums go for advertising and executive salaries.

That alone is $700 BILLION per year.

Every dime of that comes out of the premium pool instead of being paid out in claims.

Only those who have had experience in insurance know how much a scam it is--there is nothing comparable in the whole Insurance Industry.

And this is only scratching the surface.

The Democrat "Reform" is actually the worst of both worlds and will be an economic disaster.

To add insult to injury the for profits spent roughly $750 million lobbying for the Democrats' bill, and their stocks went UP when it passed, down when it was first rejected.

This was designed political theater by the for profit Health Insurers.

They are skimming trillions and they make nothing that can be exported or which cannot be far more cheaply done by the non-profit Federal Health Insurance Corporation Kucinich suggested.

This is obscene, and even more obscene that it is sold as being "Progressive."

"Today's disclosure provides more evidence of why Congress needed to pass national health reform in the first place"

On the contrary, today's disclosure provides overwhelming evidence that Congress NEVER passed national health care reform, nor was there any intent on their part to fundamentally change the injustice that is healthcare in America. True reform would have removed for-profit insurance companies like WellPoint from our health care system in the first place.

"In actuality, insurance companies, led by WellPoint, lobbied for changes to the restrictions on their business and a de-fanging of the law."

It's the CEOs of these companies and the bloodsuckers on Capitol Hill that need to be "de-fanged".

We certainly wouldn't want to infringe on any potential Goldman patent rights being the "Vampire Squid", so perhaps Well Point might consider an equally venomous description such as "Well Point Life-Sucking Vampires".

"Today's disclosure provides more evidence of why Congress needed to pass national health reform in the first place, and it also shows why we need to curb the extraordinary influence of insurance companies so they don't interfere with enforcement of the new law."

Bingo!

And STILL, the majority of my so-called liberal friends think the health care reform bill was a great thing, or at least, that "it's a start" or that "something is better than nothing." Like many others, I'm about to be laid off from my job as a teacher because the school cut my position. This means that if I can't find another job this fall, I'll be without insurance- yet again. I've had friends say, "But the health care reform bill passed," as if miraculously I'm going to have coverage. Some also say, "But you can get Cobra," as if I can afford the premiums (90% of those eligible for it do NOT get Cobra because they can't afford it). One of my co-workers keeps raving about the Obama health care reform and acting as if I have nothing to worry about. What kind of potion are these people drinking or inhaling?

Well, Well, Well,

See, here's the problem with leaving for-profit insurance companies in the mix. They are genetically incapable of doing anything other than watching out for the bottom line. Rather like a hyena who is incapable of becoming a vegetarian. It might not be he doesn't WANT to, he just can't. Even private not for profits still "have to make a living" on their own.

A public option will not cure this problem, nor even put much of a dent in it. As long as these insurance companies are allowed on the farm, it will be a perpetual struggle to keep them out of the henhouse, and they will always succeed in eating at least some of the chickens - do you really want to have to rely on any "third party" to protect yourself or your loved ones from being the ones who are eaten? By the time the farmer comes running out of the house with his shotgun, the chicken may be mortally wounded.

Folks, the only way to solve the particular problem these companies pose is to ban them from healthcare altogether. The folks that advance the single payer, Medicare for all, model have understood this for some time. How many more folks will have to go through the meat grinder before the rest of the hands catch on?

Perhaps to find an organization that had it right from the beginning, you might want to check out PNHP, or Healthcare-NOW, as opposed to Healthcare for America Now, which might have a little egg on it's face for thinking it OK to leave the private insurers in the system, for the sake of "choice".

That would have been no murder and less suffering with single-payer. Oh, well.....

Everyone should perhaps note that near the very beginning of the article there is a statement:

"...to line the pockets of wealthy executives and shareholders.".

this is because while the most dramatic and eye=catching matters from the exploitatiive corporatism culture are usually about "CEO's, Executives..and employees below them that obey orders"....

such things are ALSO as MUCH about SHAREHOLDERS and Board Members.

any person can understand, if one were honest, that corporations as "persons" COMPRISE EVERY SINGLE shareholder, board member, executives and employees (whether the latter or ANY of them consciously agree with the corporate policies or not) .

that IS the point of corporations after all:

to serve as a fictional "person" behind which the interests of the actual persons fostering behind the face of a "corporate person" are part of the corporate entity.

there is the question of what and how much conscientuousness actual PEOPLE , especially shareholders, board members, executives - who create corporate policies have about the behavior and consequences of the behavior of their "corporate person" behind which THEY shade themselves for whatever their personal stakes are.....

if, in the corporate structure, executives are "responsible towards the board members", who are in turn "responsible towards the shareholders"....

WHERE is the responsibility of shareholders towards society -- which at some point, might or might include THEIR own loved ones or friends or people in some way associated with them ...as well as people who have no relation at all with them (s0ciety at large) ...but on whom the consequences of their "corporation" are harmful (loss of jobs, homes, communities, livelihoods, environment, futures, hopes, savings. etc.)?

the answer seems to be :

NONE or very little, if at that, because of the very nature of the corporate "person" structure even if that same fictional character that houses the interests of the individuals in that corporation exists and thrives ONLY within the society at large and derives its very existence FROM that same society?.

therefore - the question should always, imo, include not just the "executives" but those that SHARE in that corporation's existence and its behavior simply because they HAVE chosen to attach themselves to it as shareholders.

I often ask myself:

"what must these shareholders - whose faces most do not know - whose existence we do not have any knowledge of , be thinking as their corporations behave in ways that harm so many others, and which might , at some point, even include THEIR very own loved ones?."

Can we all just look on the sunny side of things?
At least we finally located the Tea Partiers 'death panels'...

Ordinary folks have always been screwed by the rich and powerful, no matter what form of government they have. The only way to prevent that happening is to share the wealth, which does not work either, as there is no incentive to do your best.

So ...BREAST CANCER patients ( mostly WOMEN, and maybe a few unfortunate men) are cut from the system and left to die?

So... how's the MEN'S prostrate group doing? Is this a one sided attempt aimed at the least protected group of citizens, and those with the least income,( which would be women?)

Murder? YES, and a sexist HATE crime too. Do we need a new classifcation for "Spreadsheet" murder? It has been known for a long time that the square root of the number '2' is an irrational number...so Wellpoint and Wall St.....that makes the "2." Irrational and Deadly

I quit paying my premiums to Blue Shield of California in August when I realized that a good part of them were being used by WellPoint to corrupt Congress and put lies on the airwaves.

To me it became a matter of conscience. It was like when I was in high school and I came to understand what a crime the war in Viet Nam truly was. I just decided one day that I could not in any way cooperate with the government were I drafted. It was absolutely repugnant and these criminal "health insurance" organized crime rings are much the same. I did eventually receive orders in the mail to report to the induction center in Detroit, complete with a bus ticket. The bus ticket went up in flames with the rest of the filthy bullshit on a burner on the stove in the kitchen.

I suggest that you join my boycott of these criminals.

I decided to check out what kind of BMW $359 a month would buy and I now have a 2004 330ci and a clear conscience as far as cooperating with these criminal mafia organizations who have their vampire fangs sunk deep in the veins of America.

They should be prosecuted for murder. Or, as my dear mother used to say, "They should be marched out and shot at sunrise."

Angela Braly earned more money in 2008 ($9,844,212) than in 2007 (9,094,271), increasing her option rewards by nearly $1.5 million, and also receiving a $200,000-plus bump in base salary, from $922,269 to $1,135,538. Braly's stock awards dropped from $2,160,159 to $1,750,015 because, according to the SEC, "performance-based restricted stock units awarded in 2008 were cancelled because our ROE target for 2008 was not met." 
Braly's "other compensation" comprised use of a private jet for her and her family on business trips, just under $10,000 for legal services relating to her employment agreement and cash credits. 

It is another example of how in predatory capitalists societies heartlessness is rewardarded..

Graffiti:

END PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE DEATH SQUADS!

Bumper stickers, T-shirts.

Memorials to the disappeared!

Don't forget Spanish versions.

So, you really can get away with murder. You just need to incorporate!

Local Health Insurance Reform Teach Ins.

Fly in Kucinich to explain his plan.

Graffiti:

TERMINALLY ILL AMERICANS WITH CANCELED HEALTH INSURANCE ARE POTENTIAL TERRORISTS!

These private Health Insurance Executives don't dare go out in public without Blackwater (Xe) security details, do they?

Where do they live? What conferences do they attend?

Picket them.

We all need to understand something very clearly. Obamacare IS NOT healthcare reform, it was designed to prevent it. It is designed to prevent a "Tommy Douglas" the father of Canadian single payer from emerging at the state level and fixing this mess the same way they did in Canada. I lived in Canada in the late 50's and early 60's when the struggle for healthcare with dignity for all Canadians was unfolding before my own eyes. What Obama has done is hand the private companies a legal monopoly to make it much more difficult for the spark of real reform to start. This rubbish about "socialized medicine" or " a government takeover of healthcare" is utter and complete nonsense. I heard the same hollow arguments in Canada 50 years ago. Real Health care reform is using our tax money to pay for our healthcare. The same way it works in practically every other developed country. For the time being, to get their attention we need a state DA where some poor victim of these criminals has died to convene a grand jury and seek an indictment for murder against all the decision makers responsible. The CEO and the board of directors.. Then we need a judge with the stones to hold them for trial on remand, no bail. At that point we'll see all their bought and paid for politicians slither out of the woodwork to scream about how "outrageous" holding these people accountable for directly causing someones death is.

HCAN makes me cranky most of the time -- they helped and fought for and defended this bill while fighting to keep the single-payer folks out of the mix most of the time. Then they issue strong language about insurance companies? Please.

We might have actually saved more lives and moved towards more healthcare justice without most of the HCAN sell-outs helping push the insurance bail-out.

I guess I am supposed to believe they tried to make the bill stronger. Really? Yet every patient I know who has died or gone broke under our current system would also be as dead or as bankrupt under the health insurance bill HCAN helped pass.

Donna Smith, American SiCKO

Once again we see profits of the few over the well-being of the many. What kind of a country are we?

The insurance companies are doing what they have been designed to do - that is make the highest profit possible for the shareholders. This is why it is called 'CAPITALISM' and not 'PEOPLEISM' (or socialism).

In Vermont the legislature just voted to spend $200,000 to $300,000 to hire consultants to study and come up with 3 different health care plans. This has been a big disappointment to the citizens. We don't need consultants to tell us what we need. We need Single Payer. The hiring of the consultants is just another delay tactic. Meanwhile people are dying.

Anyone who still has enough money for a vaction this summer might want to boycott any place that puts insurance companies ahead of people. That means that they should go to Costa Rica (or anyplace but the USA) for vacation.

Notice in addition to the remarks below, the New Age cryptotype in the name "WellPoint"--the magic healing, as "arrowhead" or "Wellstone", that makes you well, oh yeah.

They must have paid an arm and a leg for that name.

Kudos to the PR researchers that came up with it, even if you are otherwise vicious hyper-Capitalist pimps and whores.

It's a pity really--with language sensitivity like that you might have writ a great literature and have become immortal.

Instead you die and rot rich and unremembered.

A: How is patient X doing?

B: She is doing just fine, almost at the WellPoint.

A: Shall we disconnect the oxygen then and throw her out on the street. Her insurance was just canceled.

B: But only one breast has been removed so far.

A: Look, half a loaf is better than none.

FADE TO:

"You are in good hands with the Death Squads at WellPoint."