"Um. ... Well, I ... uh"
May 26, 2010 9:30 pm

ShowMeProgress

She was high from attending the annual shareholders' meeting of UnitedHealth in Overland Park, KS, a suburb of Kansas City and seeing its multimillionaire CEO stuttering as he came under fire from progressive activists in the room. She said this was just the latest action of its kind, following on the heels of similar face-offs at shareholders' meetings of Signa and Wellpoint.

Five members of HCAN and Main Street Alliance took the floor and called CEO Stephen Hemsley on the carpet. GRO member Ann Johnson has been unemployed for a year and a half and thus without health insurance. She was after Hemsley for sending UnitedHealth employees to town halls and Tea Party events last summer as part of an effort to kill health care reform. He tried to weasel out of that one by contending that the employees were not paid to go. Note to Mr. Hemsley: When you pay people's salary and give them time off work to attend political events, you look foolish pretending that it's a coincidence when they show up in goodly numbers. At least have the grace to blush for that song and dance.

After Johnson softened Hemsley up, other folks pummeled him. The CEO found himself stammering when one of them wanted to know how, since UH spends only 60 cents out of every dollar it takes in on health care, how he planned to change the company's practices so that it would be spending 80 cents on the dollar as the law will require. What, no plans? No plans at all?

And by the time the 80 percent medical loss ratio requirement kicks in, the company will no longer be allowed to use rescissions to fatten the bottom line. An activist challenged him for using them at all and for announcing that the company has no intention of calling an early halt to the practice of canceling people's policies when they get sick by dredging up some "pre-existing condition." He couldn't exactly respond with "But, but. Look at all the hundreds of millions of bucks we made by the unnecessary suffering and death of customers who depended on us." Nah. Not advisable.

While he was reeling from that question, someone else asked if he could explain why Warren Buffett had recently divested himself of $102 million in UnitedHealth stock. Well. What's a guy to say? "Once we are no longer allowed to throw unprofitable customers on the trash heap, our obscene profits will drop. Actually, Mr. Buffett took the wisest course by getting out now." Better to stay silent.

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Congressman Jerry Moran complains about government spending, but his district would dry up without it
May 26, 2010 9:41 pm

Pitch

....All things considered, though, Washington has been awfully good to Kansas. In fact, the western part of the state, which Moran represents, might blow away without assistance from the nation's capital.

Moran's district, which is known as the Big First, cashes in on farm subsidies - $8.8 billion from 1995 to 2009, according to the according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization.

Think $8.8 billion sounds like a lot of money? It is. Were it not for a few scattered wheat farms in North Dakota, Moran's district would lead the nation in payouts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Let that sink in for a moment. A candidate who calls federal spending "reckless" at every opportunity represents a portion of the country that would become virtually uninhabitable without it.

Moran is trying to paint a different reality. In a recent blog entry, he described Kansans as "self-reliant."

It's a nice thing to say. It's also not true. From 1982 to 2005, Kansas received more in federal spending than it paid. The state is a welfare recipient masquerading as a frontiersman.

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