The pdf document circulated by Max Baucus containing his healthcare reform outline featured a rather obvious error.
It still had the name of the author listed in the properties dialogue box.
The author? Liz Fowler, current Baucus staffer and former VP for Public Policy and External Affairs at private insurance giant Wellpoint, parent company of Blue Cross.
While Fowler was an executive at Wellpoint, circa 2007, this is one of the things that happened:
Blue Cross of California [parent company: Wellpoint] “routinely” violated state law when it canceled individual health insurance coverage after policyholders got pregnant or sick, making no attempt to determine whether they did anything to merit such “harsh” treatment, according to a state investigation of practices that appear to be industrywide.
State regulators plan similar investigations of other health plans in California, and the findings against Blue Cross ratchet up the risk of liability for other insurers, many of whom face lawsuits from consumers who claim they were illegally dumped and subjected to substantial hardships.
As a result of its unprecedented investigation, the Department of Managed Health Care on Thursday said that it had fined Blue Cross $1 million — an amount immediately criticized by canceled policyholders and consumer advocates as too small to matter to an insurer whose parent company, WellPoint Inc., earned $3.1 billion in profit last year on revenue of $57 billion.
And Wellpoint all but authored Max Baucus’ mafioso healthcare bill. This is intolerable. No freaking wonder why the bill mandates that we all buy private insurance without a public option escape hatch.
