First, 24 hours after being shamed in the LA Times, Wellpoint has backed down on getting docs to check up on whether their patients should have their insurance recisionned (is that a word?). It’s good to know that someone’s setting insurance policy in this country even if perhaps Lisa Girion wasn’t actually elected to the job!

Then it gets announced that the AG of New York state (traditionally a post filled by a  kick-ass hungry Democrat, these days Andrew Cuomo) is going after UnitedHealth sub Ingenix and a whole raft of insurers it works with on price fixing/reimbursement rate manipulation. What particular part of a health plan’s business practices Cuomo is going after it’s hard to tell. There’s usually plenty of choice!

But it is clear that if anything gets done about health care in the next cycle, insurers are front and center in the politicians sights.

And if you think this is just me talking, check out libertarian Arnold Kling, who for some strange reason manages to get his stuff on the op-ed pages of the WSJ. He basically agrees with me.

You’d think the folks at Blue Cross of California or in their parent corporation in Indianapolis would have heard of Lisa Girion of the LA Times by now. Do they really think that by compounding the PR disaster they had with the recission stories of last year their public image is going to be helped by sending their prospective members’ applications to doctors and asking them to check them?

Health plans already ask doctors for medical records of their patients. And that’s a big enough pain as it is. Now it’s apparent that they’re asking them to check the forms of new enrollees. Their explanation that it’s for the good of the medical groups taking capitation probably doesn’t wash, as it’s probably the patient’s previous medical group which has the relevant information. Here’s the through the looking glass story from Lisa Girion at the LA Times.

My only assumption is that Wellpoint has decided that it can get away with basically anything and is desperate to make hay while the sun shines. After all no corporation can get away which such silly behavior for ever.

In one of the many newsletters I diligently peruse so that you don’t have to be contaminated directly I read this. Astonishing, even considering the source.

I had a terrific opportunity to speak to 700 health insurance agents and brokers on Tuesday morning, here for the Capitol Conference of the National Association of Health Underwriters, most ably led by CEO Janet Trautwein. These people are entrepreneurs who are on the front lines of saving the private market for health insurance in this country, and they are my heroes.

So who is it who thinks that this country’s health care heroes are the insurance brokers and underwriters who are in fact just waste motion making money off our dysfunctional insurance system? Answers/guesses in the comments please…..

CODA: I was actually speaking at a PRI event last year and met an insurance broker who explained to me that he was giving wonderful service to his clients. I with a hint of cynicism asked him what he meant and he said that he was helping them navigate the health care system, finding them the right doctors and negotiating with hospitals for them. I pointed out that those were the functions of a health advocate not a traditional insurance broker. He agreed. Hmmm…I said so you want to move your business from commission based insurance sales to fee-based consumer advocacy, and he told me that he had even been discussing this with Sheila Kheul (the main proponent of single payer in California) as a potential role for brokers in a single payer world.  How many health advocates like you do you think we need in California, I said. About 2-3,00 he said. How many health insurance brokers and underwriters are there in California I asked. About 50,000 he said.

That leads to me thinking that this bunch isn’t going quietly into the night….but then again they’re "heroes"