By Matthew Holt

Our friend Michael Yuan at Ringful is working with some students in the business honors program at the University of Texas at Austin. They write:

As part of our class project, we are conducting a survey to understand how individuals and corporations are adopting new personal healthcare technologies. We need your help!

If you are managing a wellness or disease management program for an employer or insurer or hospital, we’d love to hear from you. Our goal is to survey members in your wellness / health plan on their perceptions of those potentially disruptive healthcare technologies. After the survey, we will share with you the aggregated results from your own employee/member population.

If you are able to help, please take 5 minutes to fill out a questionnaire. At the end of the questionnaire, we will ask for your email address. We will then get in touch via email and send you the link for your employees/members to fill out the consumer survey. Thank you so much!

By Matthew Holt

KQED, local PBS in San Francisco writes to tell me that a new series of Truly CA is beginning Sunday, May 16 at 6pm on KQED Public Television 9. The independent documentary series about life in the Golden State kicks off its sixth season with Firestorm, a timely film about the role firefighters play in the current medical system. The film coincides with the first day of National EMS Week (May 16-22, 2010).

By Matthew Holt

Anyone interested in taking possession of a complete set of Health Affairs dating back to 2003 and before? A friend of mine is getting rid of them. This is in the SF Bay Area. *******@*********lt.net” target=”_blank”>Email me if you’re interested.

By Matthew Holt

One reporter changed the behavior of every health plan in California all by herself.

Even before Tuesday’s announcements, however, health insurers in California had all but stopped the number of policy cancellations, state records show. Last year, only four such cancellations were reported to the managed healthcare department, down from 1,552 in 2005.

Where the hell is her Pulitzer prize?

By Matthew Holt

Everyone’s favorite Harvard Business School professor is back in the news. Those of you with long memories may remember that at THCB I’ve been a tad critical of Regina Herzlinger’s ideas, her presentation of said ideas and—resulting in a letter from her lawyer whose previous gig was writing the Patriot Act—her stewardship of the shareholders and other stakeholders of Wellcare. Wellcare is a pretty scummy Medicare and Medicaid HMO in Florida. The scuttlebut I heard about Wellcare a few years back was that it was hiding money offshore in some weird re-insurance arrangement with a fully owned subsidiary, and was essentially faking profits a la Enron.

While that may or may not have been exactly accurate, Wellcare was certainly overcharging its client, the taxpayer in Florida. It was raided by the FBI and eventually settled with the state.

What did one of its best known directors says when she joined the board in 2003?

Dr. Herzlinger said, “WellCare is a case study of a successful public-private partnership, and a model for delivering quality affordable healthcare. Over the years to come, companies like WellCare that reach out to members with information, wellness planning and screenings will be agents of change in the delivery of managed care under government programs.

So by late 2007 Herzlinger had been on the board for four years. What had been her major achievement given the the close-to-criminal activity that was going on the company? Oh yes, it was selling nearly $2.3m worth of stock—completely coincidentally—three months before the FBI raid when the stock was worth 5 times what it fell to shortly afterwards.

And then early last year (2009) Wellcare was suspended from Medicare sales for more bad behavior. Did Regi resign at that stage? Uh….no.

But on Friday she actually did quit!

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By Matthew Holt

OK, so it’s a terrible and stolen pun but Wellpoint’s recent history is getting more and more bizarre. First they become the poster child for the recissions scandal (even if not the worst offender)—which eventually helped push the “evil insurer meme” which helped health care reform along its way.

Then they helped kill Arniecare, and tried hard to kill Obamacare, all the while being a fringe member of the AHIP coalition which actually wanted health reform. And they managed to both showcase a bizzaro interview with CEO Angela Braly and then ended up pouring gasoline on the fire dying embers of health reform in late February, early March by their crass mismanagement of their individual market business —which apparently required increases of 39% despite their alleged excellence at accurate market pricing.

Now we have a new article from Reuters who are zeroing in on the actual way that Wellpoint went after cancer patients with the aim of figuring out if there was any reason to cancel their coverage. It’s pretty unsavory stuff, but everyone knows from Lisa Girion’s reporting that this stuff was going on with all California insurers and most everyone else who could get away with it.

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By Matthew Holt

The Patient Reassurance and Consumer Total Insurance Confirmation Access legislation was signed into law last week, and the powers that be at THCB have had a radical rethink about what we should do next.

I myself have led this effort. Given that all the major problems in the health care system in the US have more or less been solved by the recent law, it’s apparent that a blog focusing on only health care is going to be pretty superfluous. Some of the more frequent and most important THCB contributors are have also subtly told us that they’re ready to move onto other things.

Brian Klepper told me that with a combination of both leadership from Congress and employers “85% of everything I think we need in health care is done.” Brian plans to spend even more time sailing his catamaran off the coast of Florida and down to the Caribbean where he’ll be focusing on his new business with David Kibbe of importing cheap Cuban rum to Florida—at least until the embargo is lifted. Bob Wachter has decided that with a combination of the new health care bill and with Don Berwick taking over all his work on patient safety, hospital care is about as good as it’s going to get. Bob is going to stay in health care, but he’s taking a crack at the issue of the rural physician shortage by moving to Idaho to start a solo primary care practice. He’ll be opening his new practice just as soon as the bunker is built and stocked with sufficient supplies.

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