Recently, the Indianapolis Star, New York Times, Indianapolis Business Journal and Wall Street Journal have noted the activities at WellPoint. Most noteworthy is the decline in its stock value following a disappointing earnings prediction from management. It has lost approximately 50% of its value in the last several months.

WellPoint has lost at least fifteen of its top executives since 2004, including all the " movers and shakers" who negotiated and financed the acquisitions that made the company the largest private insurer in the country, insuring almost as many people as Medicare. It is now managed by a lawyer whose specialty is government affairs and an accountant. The old CFO left because of disgraceful personal behavior, and his successor left after only six months. The company has been unable to integrate its diverse claims processing software, slowing claims payment ( to its own advantage, coincidentally), and also interfering with its ability to know its costs.This results in delay and difficulty adjusting plan details and premiums pricing to keep the gravy train rolling. Meanwhile, current and former executives are unloading millions in stock options before the market falls below the strike price. Health care costs continue to rise much faster than inflation. Since WellPoint's growth has been overwhelmingly by acquisition rather than internal growth, as the stock price falls its ability to grow diminishes. Its internal growth has always been puny. All this has serious implications for the public.

In a recent Star article, a WellPoint spokesperson bemoaned the fact that more people had the flu, that cancer treatment was more expensive, and that neonatal intensive care units were full. The WellPoint "medical-loss" ratio has risen to 83%, leaving a paltry 17% to spend on such valueless activities as advertising, marketing, plan design, authorization, certification,and myriad second-guessing of all types. The chosen corporate response to current trends is to place emphasis on our unhealthy lifestyles and encourage " consumerism", the strategy that tries to persuade us that buying health insurance is no different than buying groceries. The result of this strategy is to have the insured pay more of the cost so he or she has " more skin in the game".

Dan Evans, CEO of Clarian Health Partners spoke the truth when he observed that the insurance industry business model was in conflict with Clarian's. Shareholder wealth and beneficiary health are not compatible goals. It is also in conflict with the practice of medicine and has led physicians to become better businessmen than doctors.

A recent IBJ article noted that Anthem, the WellPoint subsidiary, now insures 60% of all Hoosiers who have commercial insurance. Both M-Plan and Sagamore have recently gone out of business. Those two organizations negotiated health care prices for 1,300,000 people in Indiana. The Indiana Department of Insurance does nothing to restrain WellPoint's monopolistic behavior.

All of the above is evidence of the failure of the free market in health care. Average citizens need to understand that as these trends continue, the public health will deteriorate as fewer people have access, costs will continue to rise, politicians will dither, and the American people will continue to pay more and get less health care than any other industrialized nation. The U.S. needs to move definitively in the direction of a tax-funded, publicly administered, privately delivered, guaranteed national health program modeled after Medicare. This must be a grass-roots effort.Everyone needs to speak up!

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