Regence BlueShield president responds to critics

Insurance companies must protect their financial reserves to guarantee they will be able to cover their members’ health costs, writes Regence BlueShield President Jonathan Hensley in an op-ed piece in the Sept. 30 issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Hensley was writing in reply to an earlier op-ed piece that questioned why Regence was raising rates on individuals seeking coverage when the health insurer had a surplus close to $1 billion.

The authors of the column,  Martha Scoville, a Regence policy holder, and Nate Rozeboom, a registered nurse at Harborview Medical Center, want Hensley to disclose how many claims the Regence has denied in the past five years, how many people have been rejected for coverage in the past five years, and what are the compensation packages for their top five corporate executives.

Scoville and Rozeboom said Hensley had given their requests for information the “runaround.” Scoville and Rozeboom are members of a health-reform advocacy group called the Health Care for All Coalition.

In his response, Hensley says Regence had doubled the number of individuals covered sine 2004 “even though we lose money on the individual market”. State law, he notes, requires health plans to accept 92 percent of applicants for individual coverage.

Health insurance profits are not to blame for the high cost of health care, Hensley argues: 

“Here are the facts about why our health care is so expensive: High supply drives demand up instead of down, inefficiency drains about half of all our health care spending, and misaligned financial incentives pay for procedures, regardless of quality of the end result.”

To learn more:

• Read Hensley’s op-ed piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
• Read LocalHealthGuide’s post on Scoville and Rozeboom’s original op-ed piece below and their “list of demands“.
• Visit Washington Regence BlueShield’s website.
• Visit Health Care for America Now Coalition website.
• Visit the Coalition’s Washington member: the Washington Community Action Network.
• Go to our Resources & Support page and look under “Insurance” for links to Washington State agencies that can help you find insurance.

P-I columnists tear into new Regence Blueshield president

Tags: BlueShield, Health Care for All Americans Now, Regence

Category: Health-care Policy, Insurance, Uncategorized