Joshua Minton's Online Pulpit : Health Insurance Companies are Run by Unthinking, Disconnected Leadership

To prove that American health care is circling the drain because of health insurance companies, I submit the following into evidence:

WellPoint Inc. employees will have a personal stake in the health of the company’s customers, thanks to a new plan that ties a portion of their annual bonuses to it. The nation’s largest health insurer unveiled a plan Tuesday to link 5 percent of every annual bonus to a new measurement called the Member Health Index. The index will monitor 20 different clinical areas to determine whether patient care is improving. It aims to take measurements from broad categories like patient safety or care management and tell whether care has improved for most patients, but especially those dealing with chronic conditions like diabetes, asthma or high blood pressure…

Sure it’s only 5% of the annual bonus but if you think the lowly claims processor in this company has any effect whatsoever on patient quality of care in the doctor’s office then, as a less than politically correct reader once told me, “you’ve been eating retard sandwiches with down syndrome mayonnaise.”

How about tying 100% of executive bonuses to this little index and giving the frontline workers definite bonuses based on definite quality and production standards for the jobs they are doing? This dipshit PR maneuver is a blatant public example that the leadership of this company is completely out of touch with the people who work for it and how the work they perform actually affects the bottom line.

LINKS: