I don't know why I'm bothering anymore, readers, because the Boston Globe is making me sick these days.
"Insurer battles identity crisis; Blue Cross’s status as nonprofit scrutinized amid outcry over pay" by March 20, 2011|By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff
The doctor was angry. Not long after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts urged him and other health care providers to keep their costs down, the insurer this month disclosed it had agreed to an $11 million payout for its former chief executive. In a terse voicemail, the physician told Blue Cross: You have a credibility problem.
It was the kind of call Andrew Dreyfus expected. Hired as chief executive of Blue Cross last fall, Dreyfus has been championing affordability — prodding payers and providers to work together to rein in the price of medical care following years of double-digit insurance premium increases.
Now you know where the $11 million dollars came from.
Then came the uproar over millions of dollars collected by his predecessor, Cleve L. Killingsworth, and headlines about five-figure annual fees paid to board members. Suddenly, the talk about lowering health care costs rang hollow.
That's a nice way of saying the money addicts lied, 'eh?
Also see: The Eight-Million Dollar Escape
To many, Killingsworth’s pay package and the board’s fees — which were suspended more than a week ago in an effort to diffuse the public outcry — undercut Dreyfus’s call to control health care spending. “It’s hard to reconcile those two messages,’’ he admitted....
Yeah, don't hurt yourselves trying:
2 Blue Cross directors justify stipends
Insurer’s board suspends own pay
I wonder if they have a problem getting health care.
The disclosure of Killingsworth’s rich exit package exposed the tension between the insurer’s roots as a charity and its current standing as a financial powerhouse whose board is packed with well-connected business, labor, and education insiders....
That's why you are being ripped off, dear readers.
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And look who helped:
"Blue Cross at top of the heap, thanks to governor’s inaction" by March 06, 2011|Kevin Cullen, Globe Columnist
Blue Cross Blue Shield had a good week.
Forget the embarrassing headlines about the disgraceful amounts of money the supposedly nonprofit Blue Cross has seen fit to give its last two former chief executives, somewhere in the neighborhood of $28 million, the kind of neighborhood most of us can only drive by.
Forget the headlines about politically wired Blue Cross board members raking in up to $89,000 a year to sit around a big table and drink coffee and nod up and down like those toy dogs in the back windows of Buicks on Revere Beach, circa 1972.
Headlines, like memories and outrage, fade....
Not here, dear readers.
What is fading is my feeling for the Boston Globe.
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