Benefits cut

You can't make this shit up.

WellPoint Inc., the largest U.S. insurer, dismissed a "small number" of workers last week and announced cuts to employee health benefits Friday, in its latest attempt to deal with the recession's toll on enrollment.

I wonder if that "small number of workers" included those who excelled at saving the company money through recissions, that is, retroactively canceling people's coverage after they filed expensive claims. As noted in a previous post, one criterion used by WellPoint to evaluate employees' job performance was how well they condemned people by canceling their insurance at the moment they get sick and really need it. In other words, for some WellPoint employees, condemning people by canceling their insurance at the moment they get sick and really need it was part of the job.

The investigation has also found that at least one insurance company, WellPoint, evaluated employee performance based in part on the amount of money its employees saved the company through retroactive rescissions of health insurance policies. According to documents obtained by the committee, one WellPoint official was awarded a perfect score of five for exceptional performance based on having saved the company nearly $10 million through rescissions.

These practices reveal that when an insurance company receives a claim for an expensive, life-saving treatment, some of them will look for a way, any way, to avoid having to pay for it.

And if the company is cutting benefits for its own employees, what do you think it's doing to other policyholders?