This is the fourth installment in a series of health-care columns by Fortune's Shawn Tully.
You probably have never heard of Robin Beaton, and that's what's wrong with the debate over health care reform.
Like one of its members unable to shake a bad cold, WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the U.S. through its Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, has a bad case of the sniffles. Profits dropped 25% to $2.5 billion in 2008, as rising unemployment cut its healthcare rolls. And a computer glitch that denied benefits to thousands of seniors resulted in harsh sanctions, including a temporary ban from marketing and selling Medicare plans. <P>Now the company, like other healthcare providers, is likely to find itself even more in the crosshairs of the Federal government, as the Obama administration tackles health care reform. Ah chooo! - <I>S.K.</I>
The recession has millions of consumers spending less, saving more and paying off debt. The fact that we are adjusting to the reality of this economy is good news, to be sure. There are items in any budget that can be scaled back easily.
The perception is that 20-somethings are youthful and robust, in the peak of their health.
Dear FSB: What is a good, affordable way to provide my employees with health insurance coverage? (My business is an insurance company, but we sell auto insurance.) I have a total of three employees.
I'm the founder of Cheetah Learning, which offers project-management training courses worldwide (cheetahlearning.com). We teach our business clients how to meet goals such as developing a product, launching a website, or reaching a sales quota. I also run a corporate retreat in Haines, Alaska, and sell kayak-making kits that can be used for team building at our Haines facility or the customer's site. Our clients include Blue Cross Blue Shield, IBM, and Pepsi, and we posted sales of about $9 million in 2006.
U.S. stocks could be hit by subprime worries again Wednesday, as problems with those risk mortgage loans caused General Motors to post far worse than expected results.
» When Jacqueline Epcar of Valley Glen, Calif. turned 19 last year, she no longer qualified for coverage on her parents' health plan. So her mother, Ellyn, signed her up for a new individual policy...
Are insurers more hard-nosed with claims than they used to be?
This is the fourth installment in a series of health-care columns by Fortune's Shawn Tully.
You probably have never heard of Robin Beaton, and that's what's wrong with the debate over health care reform.
Like one of its members unable to shake a bad cold, WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the U.S. through its Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, has a bad case of the sniffles. Profits dropped 25% to $2.5 billion in 2008, as rising unemployment cut its healthcare rolls. And a computer glitch that denied benefits to thousands of seniors resulted in harsh sanctions, including a temporary ban from marketing and selling Medicare plans. <P>Now the company, like other healthcare providers, is likely to find itself even more in the crosshairs of the Federal government, as the Obama administration tackles health care reform. Ah chooo! - <I>S.K.</I>
The recession has millions of consumers spending less, saving more and paying off debt. The fact that we are adjusting to the reality of this economy is good news, to be sure. There are items in any budget that can be scaled back easily.
The perception is that 20-somethings are youthful and robust, in the peak of their health.
Dear FSB: What is a good, affordable way to provide my employees with health insurance coverage? (My business is an insurance company, but we sell auto insurance.) I have a total of three employees.
I'm the founder of Cheetah Learning, which offers project-management training courses worldwide (cheetahlearning.com). We teach our business clients how to meet goals such as developing a product, launching a website, or reaching a sales quota. I also run a corporate retreat in Haines, Alaska, and sell kayak-making kits that can be used for team building at our Haines facility or the customer's site. Our clients include Blue Cross Blue Shield, IBM, and Pepsi, and we posted sales of about $9 million in 2006.
U.S. stocks could be hit by subprime worries again Wednesday, as problems with those risk mortgage loans caused General Motors to post far worse than expected results.
» When Jacqueline Epcar of Valley Glen, Calif. turned 19 last year, she no longer qualified for coverage on her parents' health plan. So her mother, Ellyn, signed her up for a new individual policy...
Are insurers more hard-nosed with claims than they used to be?
When Jacqueline Epcar of Valley Glen, Calif. turned 19 last year, she no longer qualified for coverage on her parents' health plan. So her mother, Ellyn, signed her up for a new individual policy with Blue Shield of California.
As Breast Cancer Awareness Month draws to a close, CNN.com asked readers to share their stories. Here is a sampling of responses, some of which have been edited:
1. Diagnose the Challenge
It seems like cheating, but it's not: Acquisition is the way many companies, like WellPoint Health Network, make it onto the Fastest-Growing list. WellPoint, created in 1993 when Blue Cross of Cali...
February 14 is just around the corner and, while others are contemplating love and commitment, we've been carefully selecting stocks that won't leave you jilted at the altar.
In the heyday of the 1990s bull market, Mike and Sue Peters of Durham, N.C. got a jump-start on retirement. As Blue Cross and Blue Shield employees, they were eligible for pension and health-care benefits at age 55.
A company called Subimo -- which is itself a startup -- offers the kind of services that may soon become critical to other small businesses trying to cut healthcare costs.
The problem with working for an outfit such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is that everyone thinks you can answer medical questions. The situation becomes even more vexing when your 69-year-...
Thinking about health insurance is about as much fun as a root canal--unless you're Sir Richard Branson. After livening up air travel and mobile phones, the Virgin Group founder and British billion...
Calling a complaint hotline can cause some people's blood to boil, even leading unsatisfied customers to terminate their business.
Losing (or leaving) your job is hard enough, but the prospect of losing your health coverage at the same time makes the scenario doubly fearsome. Conventional plans can be prohibitively expensive o...
As the time for New Year's resolutions approaches, many people will put healthier habits at the top of their list, only to abandon those lofty goals by Jan. 2.
As the time for New Year's resolutions approaches, many people will put healthier habits at the top of their list, only to abandon those lofty goals by Jan. 2. But most folks agree that money talks...
Q. Last year my wife thought she was having a heart attack, so we called 911. Luckily, it was just a scare. But the hospital keeps sending us a bill for $900. I was assured that all her bills would...
Fall is coming and so is open enrollment season, the time when you can review and choose your benefits. That means navigating an alphabet soup of plans and accounts. Should you spring for an FSA? E...
Q. Last year my wife thought she was having a heart attack, so we called 911. Luckily, it was just a scare. But the hospital keeps sending us a bill for $900. I was assured that all her bills would be covered 100 percent. We have Medicare, plus my retiree health insurance, with all the bells and whistles. Now the hospital is threatening to turn the case over to a collection agency. Help!
Everyone knows cash and politics go hand in hand. But perhaps never in such an obvious way as the event sponsorship at the upcoming political conventions.
To look at its offices, you would not expect RD Systems to be the site of one of the most far-reaching social and economic experiments in the country. Housed in a featureless metal box in an indust...
Small-business owners have often felt like second-class citizens when it comes to their own health insurance. With U.S. premiums up 13.9% last year, a common strategy for entrepreneurs is to buy "c...
Early mariners had a way with a phrase. "All souls on board" meant a full ship of passengers, ready to set sail. Similarly, consultants to the health-care industry often describe the size of an ins...
This fall, the annual ritual of picking a health plan will be more challenging than ever. Set aside, for a moment, people's heightened sense of financial vulnerability since September's attacks on ...
For David Titcomb, buying health insurance is a bit like buying a candy bar. Over time the price keeps rising and the bar keeps shrinking. As the president of Titcomb Associates, a land-surveying f...
How can you tell a cashier at Sears from one at Pop's Bagels? Look at their teeth. Odds are, the Pop's worker has no dental plan. Odds are, he has no health plan at all and is skimping on medical c...
How can you tell a cashier at Sears from a cashier at Pop's Bagels? Just look at their teeth. Odds are, the Pop's employee has no dental plan. Odds are, in fact, the Pop's cashier has no health pla...
What does HMO stand for? Surf the Internet, and you'll come up with a litany of choices: Half Minute Over. High-class Muggers Outfit. Healthy Members Only. Or our favorite--Hurry Mothers Out.
On Jan. 1, 1998, I discovered I was on the verge of becoming a statistic. "Three million Americans between 55 and 65 have no health insurance coverage," read a piece in the New York Times. These pe...
I started having vague concerns about managed care a few years ago when my new doctor, selected from a thick roster approved by a managed-care company with which my employer has a contract, began g...
Philadelphia mayor Edward Rendell has been huffing and puffing of late about suing gunmakers. He's looking, of course, at the billions the states are extracting in settlements from the tobacco indu...
Don't like your managed-care company? Tired of dispirited doctors processing the mob in the waiting room with all the care and compassion of postal clerks? Tough. What are you going to do about it?...
For nearly 70 years, Blue Cross/Blue Shield played an almost altruistic role in society, providing high-quality, affordable health coverage to all comers, healthy or not. "They were an insurer with...
If sticking needles into your body isn't your idea of curing a migraine, the medical community has three words for you: Get with it! A recent turnaround in attitudes toward alternative medicine is ...
With summer travel on their minds, readers have shown particular interest in June's "How to Avoid the Vacation from Hell." The article offered tips on how to minimize problems like those encountere...
Before you step into the voting booth Nov. 8 to cast your ballot, keep this in mind: In August 1992, MONEY pegged the cost of running Congress at about $2.8 billion (actual outlays in 1992 totaled ...
Insurance broker Madeleine Huff, 62, faced long odds in 1993, when she began trying to lower the cost of medical coverage for herself and her retired husband Ike, 64. Since 1977, the Auburn, Calif....
It's great to have a best friend to work with, someone who shares your goals and vision -- and helps you make $1 million by the time you're 23. That's what Doug Becker, now 28, and Chris Hoehn-Sari...
IF YOU'VE tuned out the unending complexities of health care reform -- if you can't even recall what's bothering Harry and Louise, and by the way, are they still married? -- it's okay. Though Clint...
DIMARK -- The fate of health care reform may be about as certain as next week's weather, but some trends are clearly visible. Insurance companies and others in the medical care business are vying f...
ACCESS Health Marketing has a powerful home remedy for the feverish rise in medical costs: soothing, easy-to-swallow telephone counseling that helps patients make their own decisions. That's a radi...
Remember how your wallet bulged back in 1993? A phone card, three credit cards and a bunch of receipts, ATM card, frequent-flier cards, company ID, Blue Cross, pictures of the kids, and, of course,...
EVERYBODY'S DOIN' IT, doin' it, doin' it. Business process reengineering is the hottest trend in management. The mint should coin money as fast as the consulting firms that peddle reengineering, se...
April's Newsline item "Checking Out the Shakiest Blue Cross Plans" does a substantial disservice to Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Vermont. In 1991 and 1992 this 163,000-member company earned net profit...
The Kelleys -- those sailors in the shades -- have good reason to smile. Six years ago, Jim and Shirley, then 56 and 55, fled Raleigh, N.C. for the Caribbean breezes of St. Thomas, where they now d...
Only all-out war could reshape Americans' lives more profoundly than the events that will begin to unfold in Washington, D.C. this month, when the Clinton Administration presents its health-reform ...
The savings and loan industry is teetering, banks are tottering, and a fifth of the 72 Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans are run down financially. What other traits do they have in common? The top execu...
After a spectacular two-year run-up, medical stocks began sinking more than a year ago -- only to plunge this past winter when investors finally grasped the fact that Bill (and Hillary) Clinton wer...
Rising fears of carjackings and muggings are leading Americans to arm themselves with self-defense sprays or pocket-size alarms. These devices are sold at hardware stores, drugstores and by mail fr...
The Securities and Exchange Commission will launch an on-line computer filing system April 26. Some 500 large companies and mutual funds will put their federally required statements on-line; 14,000...
President Clinton's proposed national service program, unveiled March 1, is only the first of a probable series of changes that will affect the way the federal government helps students pay for col...
Last winter, while Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood twisted slowly in the wind, worried householders across America began ringing up lawyers, accountants and government officials about their domestic emplo...
If you ever doubted the value of real estate agents who work solely for home buyers (as opposed to traditional agents who report to sellers), consider this: A recent study by U.S. Sprint found that...
While Hillary Clinton won't announce her Rx for the nation's health-care ills until May, chances are you've already tasted one of the likely medicines -- and perhaps suffered its ill effects. That ...
Since deadbeat dads (and some moms) are reneging on more than $16 billion annually in child-support payments, President Clinton says he plans to spend $328 million by 1997 to develop ''the toughest...
Pick up Grow Rich Slowly: The Merrill Lynch Guide to Retirement Planning (Viking, $27.50), a book that comes with a slide-rule-style calculator to show how much you'll amass by saving specific amou...
MARCH -43 FEBRUARY -41 YEAR AGO -49
Although more than 80% of the nearly 10,000 readers who responded to MONEY's February poll on health care think the treatment they receive personally is good or excellent, a full 51% believe the co...
No wonder Blue Cross/Blue Shield policyholders are jittery. Since 1990: West Virginia's Blue Cross/Blue Shield was declared insolvent; financially feeble Blue Shield of Western New York merged with...
Like a former slugger who hung on too long in the majors, baseball cards have lost much of their value. Oversupply has pinched prices of cards printed since 1980 by as much as 90% in the past six m...
Of the nation's 72 Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, these 14 are the most financially troubled, according to Weiss Research. Weiss measures the economic strength of the Blues by reviewing each one...
Scalpels are poised to start operating on the nation's $839 billion health- care system. Although there is no consensus yet on where the knife should fall, it appears increasingly likely that you'l...
IF THE WELL-BEING of its children is the proper measure of the health of a civilization, the United States is in grave danger. Of the 65 million Americans under 18, fully 20% live in poverty, 22% l...
Starting this fall, high school students in Maine will have a fourth option besides dropping out, trying to enter the work force with only a high school degree, or going on to college: an apprentic...
Q In 1987, my wife and I dropped our New Jersey Blue Cross/Blue Shield health plan to buy one recommended by the National Association for the Self-Employed. The plan, which costs us $1,701 a quarte...
THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY is in the most challenging period it has ever confronted,'' says Harold Poling, CEO of Ford Motor. You've heard it before. But it is nevertheless true, and this year's expec...
Most Americans take their Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans for granted -- much as they once did their local savings and loans. Maybe they shouldn't. Last year Blue Cross/Blue Shield of West Virgini...
SPECIAL REPORT: HOUSING
Q My husband and I recently moved to New Hampshire, where he is self-employed and I'm looking for work. We previously got our health care at group rates through Kaiser Permanente's HMO (I used to w...
Sniff out bargains in government-repossessed homes by phoning the Resolution Trust Corporation (800-782-3006), which controls 19,000 single-family houses and condos; or get in touch with your local...
Edgar Wachenheim III is a value investor who can turn a profit no matter which way the market moves. As CEO of Greenhaven Associates in Manhattan, he manages $300 million in assets for 14 wealthy f...
RUSSELL No sweat. Despite a disappointing third quarter when earnings remained basically flat, this manufacturer of sporting apparel is in fighting shape. Russell, which makes togs for the Dallas C...
Walt and Lettie Seaver of Colusa, Calif. are still grieving over the death of their eight-year-old daughter Emma from leukemia 13 months ago. They are also still angry -- primarily with the insurer...
JITTERLESS VIDEOS So that video you shot from the cable car looks as if you were there the day of the earthquake? To the rescue comes Panasonic's squarish PV-40 Palmcorder. Using ''fuzzy logic,'' t...
For an idea of your employer-paid health insurance coverage in retirement, consider what it is now. Chances are your company has been tinkering with your medical benefits lately, adding an option h...
Q. I bought a computer, printer and answering machine to assist me in searching for a new job. I use the computer 90% of the time to print resumes and letters to send to prospective employers. The ...
With Medicare's new catastrophic coverage picking up more of the health-care tab for older Americans, you might think that medigap insurance -- the private policies that pay the portion of costs th...
IT IS THE WORST OF TIMES for middle managers, that beleaguered band of demibosses currently blamed for most ills afflicting corporate America. Either their jobs are vanishing in mergers, takeovers,...
When Blue Cross & Blue Shield of the National Capital Area agreed to contribute $271,000 to the Beautiful Babies media campaign promoting prenatal care for women in Washington, it was more than a g...
TAXES Q. I plan to buy a horse within the next year. If I ride my horse twice a week and lease it to a riding academy the rest of the time, can I write off some of the cost of stabling the horse at...
Tired of waiting for the federal or state government to do it for them, officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, have developed a $1 million catastrophic insurance policy that sells for a premium ...
CONSIDER what doctors, to say nothing of patients, don't know about the value of just one procedure. Each year about 80,000 Americans get a carotid endarterectomy, a kind of Roto-Rooter job on clog...
On April 1, 40 pediatricians and 35 family practitioners, disgruntled over their fees, pulled out of North Carolina's largest health maintenance organization, the 16,206-member Raleigh Blue Cross P...
In 1986, Deborah McIntyre was earning $55,000 a year as an attorney at a prestigious law firm in San Francisco -- and hating every minute of it. ''The , perks were nice, but the work was boring,'' ...
Mastering the insurance market is like committing the intricacies of the city bus system to memory. It can be useful, but not something you would advertise at cocktail parties. But even though pick...
Most people's foremost fear in planning their retirement is simply outliving their money. Yet that terror can be tamed by Social Security, a pension and a well-planned program of personal savings a...
Most people's health insurance is tied to their job. But what if your company goes under or restructures, laying you off, among thousands of other employees? What if your family breaks up? What if ...
A BEARDED MAN with burly arms, Mo Murphy, 40, seems typecast as a heavy-press operator, a job in which he earns around $13.50 an hour at the Ford Motor Co. plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He speaks, ...
Getty Trust: War and Pieces The $4-billion Getty family trust sparked a war among the heirs of J. Paul Getty, who demanded that Getty's son Gordon be removed as sole trustee, and haggled over who s...
* EACH NEW ADVANCE in high-technology medicine sharpens the debate over tortuous ethical questions -- who should receive treatment with these expensive new technologies, who should pay, and who sho...
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