Policyholders, Prop 45 Advocates And Nurses Deliver A Truck Load Of Manure To Blue Shield

"We're here to give back the B.S. that Blue Shield and the rest of the health insurance industry has been throwing at voters in the anti-Prop 45 advertising that lies about Prop 45's impact and hides the insurance companies' funding. Prop 45 simply extends to California health insurance companies the same rate regulation that exists in 35 other states for health insurance and has saved Californians more than $100 billion on their auto insurance," said Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog.
Blue Shield has given $12.3 million of policyholders' money to the $57 million insurance war chest against Prop 45, has been shoveling to Californians in its deceptive advertising against the rate regulation measure. The four largest health insurance companies responsible for most of the money against Prop 45, Blue Shield, Anthem Blue Cross and its parent company Wellpoint, Kaiser and Health Net gave another $13.5 million against Prop 45 in just the last week.

Press Release;

Policyholders, Prop 45 Advocates And Nurses Deliver Manure To Blue Shield To Return Some of the B.S. In Insurance Industry's Ad Campaign Against Prop 45 - Spending Reaches $57 Million, Says Consumer Watchdog Campaign

 SAN DIEGO, Oct. 23, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Health insurance policyholders joined with bedside nurses from the California Nurses Association and consumer advocates supporting Proposition 45, which prohibits excessive rate increases, to deliver a pickup truck containing a ton of steer manure to Blue Shield's San Diego offices.

The Proposition 45 supporters said they were simply returning some of the same material that the insurance company, which has given $12.3 million of policyholders' money to the $57 million insurance war chest against Prop 45, has been shoveling to Californians in its deceptive advertising against the rate regulation measure. The four largest health insurance companies responsible for most of the money against Prop 45, Blue Shield, Anthem Blue Cross and its parent company Wellpoint, Kaiser and Health Net gave another $13.5 million against Prop 45 in just the last week.

"We're here to give back the B.S. that Blue Shield and the rest of the health insurance industry has been throwing at voters in the anti-Prop 45 advertising that lies about Prop 45's impact and hides the insurance companies' funding. Prop 45 simply extends to California health insurance companies the same rate regulation that exists in 35 other states for health insurance and has saved Californians more than $100 billion on their auto insurance," said Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog.

Prop 45 requires health insurance companies to get approval from the elected insurance commissioner before raising rates, but the advertising hides this fact and falsely claims that consumers have to choose between Prop 45 and "an independent commission." The ads apparently refer to Covered California, the state health insurance exchange, but that appointed body does not have the power to reject excessive rate increases as they claim.

The No On Prop 45 campaign's advertising has been widely branded as deceptive. Pulitzer prize-winning LA Times columnist Mike Hiltzik wrote about the No On Prop 45 campaign's deceptions in a column titled "The 5 rules on how to kill a consumer-friendly initiative." Read the column here.

Experts with California State University's Project for an Informed Electorate showed how the advertisements were misleading and gave it poor grades on Monday in a KCRA- TV report: 

A widespread insurance industry advertisement against 45 has a purported "small business owner," who claims Prop 45 will hurt his business, but is in fact an actor who played Father Marquez in Modern Family. See the actor: The advertisement does not identify the actor as a paid spokesperson.

Read more about the insurance companies' false advertising claims: Yeson45

Yesterday, the insurance commissioner announced that a proposed rate increase impacting 120,000 employees of small businesses insured by Anthem Blue Cross was unreasonable but would go into effect regardless, because insurance companies currently do not need approval for rate increases. Under Proposition 45, the insurance commissioner could reject rate hikes he found to be excessive.

Blue Shield also recently raised its rates despite rate reviews conducted by Consumers Union, under an Affordable Care Act grant, that found the rates unjustified based on the insurance companies' record-high surpluses, unrealistic claims projections and excessive company perks.

For example, Blue Shield has 1600% more in its $4.4 billion investment reserves than is required by the State of California.  Proposition 45 can stop this "over-reserving" practice of insurance companies by giving the insurance commissioner the power to prevent rate hikes if companies engage in such creative accounting.

Health insurance policyholders spoke out today about the company's practices and deceptive advertising.

Rena Marocco of Vista said: "Our premiums have steadily increased for the past three years but this year was the biggest jump - almost $400/month for my family.  We try to put some money away in savings, but that's all getting eaten up by the cost of our healthcare. Our monthly bill is almost as high as our mortgage.  And besides the premiums, I still have out of pocket expenses to pay for ongoing monitoring and treatment.  As a breast cancer survivor, I am constantly being told by my doctors to avoid stress - but how can I when I have to stress out about how I'm going to pay this huge insurance premium?  I support Prop 45 to stop these egregious premium hikes."  

"Premiums for my wife and I increased close to 300% over the years for higher deductible health insurance plans that effectively offered no real coverage. We thought we were lucky when we got a subsidy with a Covered California plan. But now, even with some of our $1200 monthly premiums to Anthem BlueCross being paid for by the taxpayers, we still aren't getting the coverage we were promised. My wife needed emergency services and Anthem stuck us with a huge bill that should have been covered. I'm still paying hundreds of dollars a month for coverage that isn't worth it," said Phil Rogul, of Carlsbad.

The nonprofit Blue Shield has also come under fire in San Francisco for having a multi-million dollar skybox at the new 49ers stadium while raising rates and cutting doctors' networks.  The company recently refused to accept a petition at its San Francisco offices from 22,000 California taxpayers and policyholders who wanted access to those tickets since their premiums and tax dollars paid for the skybox.  Watch video of that protest 

Paid for by Consumer Watchdog Campaign – Yes on 45, a coalition of consumer advocates, attorneys, policyholders, and nurses. 777 S. Figueroa St., Ste. 4050, Los Angeles, CA  90017.  Major Funding by Consumer Watchdog Campaign and California Nurses Association.

SOURCE Consumer Watchdog Campaign

IBM's Jeopardy Wiz Watson Goes To Work For WellPoint, A Medical Insurance Company

Pretty soon IBM's Watson technology will be assisting Doctors and others involved in health care how to treat you based on your health history and Watson's huge capacity to comb through data.

The Wall Street Journal reports that IBM's new technology will first be put to use for patient treatment requests by quickly scanning a person's medical history and suggesting the best course of action. In the coming years, Wellpoint hopes to put Watson's immense database at the fingertips of doctors and nurses, providing a valuable ally in disease diagnosis and research.


WellPoint and IBM Announce Agreement to Put Watson to Work in Health Care

INDIANAPOLIS and ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- WellPoint, Inc. (NYSE: WLP), and IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced an agreement today to create the first commercial applications of the IBM Watson technology. Under the agreement, WellPoint will develop and launch Watson-based solutions to help improve patient care through the delivery of up-to-date, evidence-based health care for millions of Americans. IBM will develop the base Watson healthcare technology on which WellPoint's solution will run.

Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, is a computing system built by a team of IBM scientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge - build a computing system that rivals a human's ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence. Earlier this year, Watson competed and won against two of the most celebrated players ever to appear on Jeopardy!. This historic match is being rebroadcast over three days, beginning today.

Watson's ability to analyze the meaning and context of human language, and quickly process vast amounts of information to suggest options targeted to a patient's circumstances, can assist decision makers, such as physicians and nurses, in identifying the most likely diagnosis and treatment options for their patients.

In recent years, few areas have advanced as rapidly as health care. For physicians, incorporating hundreds of thousands of articles into practice and applying them to patient care is a significant challenge. Watson can sift through an equivalent of about 1 million books or roughly 200 million pages of data, and analyze this information and provide precise responses in less than three seconds. Using this extraordinary capability WellPoint is expected to enable Watson to allow physicians to easily coordinate medical data programmed into Watson with specified patient factors, to help identify the most likely diagnosis and treatment options in complex cases. Watson is expected to serve as a powerful tool in the physician's decision making process.

Medical conditions such as cancer, diabetes, chronic heart or kidney disease are incredibly intricate. New solutions incorporating Watson are being developed to have the ability to look at massive amounts of medical literature, population health data, and even a patient's health record, in compliance with applicable privacy and security laws, to answer profoundly complex questions. For example, we envision that new applications will allow physicians to use Watson to consult patient medical histories, recent test results, recommended treatment protocols and the latest research findings loaded into Watson to discuss the best and most effective courses of treatment with their patients.

"There are breathtaking advances in medical science and clinical knowledge, however; this clinical information is not always used in the care of patients. Imagine having the ability to take in all the information around a patient's medical care -- symptoms, findings, patient interviews and diagnostic studies. Then, imagine using Watson analytic capabilities to consider all of the prior cases, the state-of-the-art clinical knowledge in the medical literature and clinical best practices to help a physician advance a diagnosis and guide a course of treatment," said Sam Nussbaum, M.D., WellPoint's Chief Medical Officer. "We believe this will be an invaluable resource for our partnering physicians and will dramatically enhance the quality and effectiveness of medical care they deliver to our members."

Watson may help physicians identify treatment options that balance the interactions of various drugs and narrow among a large group of treatment choices, enabling physicians to quickly select the more effective treatment plans for their patients. It is also expected to streamline communication between a patient's physician and their health plan, helping to improve efficiency in clinical review of complex cases. It could even be used to direct patients to the physician in their area with the best success in treating a particular illness.

"With medical information doubling every five years and health care costs increasing, Watson has tremendous potential for applications that improve the efficiency of care and reduce wait times for diagnosis and treatment by enabling clinicians with access to the best clinical data the moment they need it," said Manoj Saxena, general manager, Watson Solutions, IBM Software Group. "WellPoint's commitment to innovation and their work to improve how care is delivered and benefits administered make them an ideal partner for IBM's software and services to pioneer new efficiencies in health care."

Depending on the progress of the development efforts, WellPoint anticipates employing Watson technology in early 2012, working with select physician groups in clinical pilots.

"The implications for health care are extraordinary," said Lori Beer, WellPoint's executive vice president of Enterprise Business Services. "As one of the nation's largest health insurers, we have an important role to play in helping to improve health care quality. We believe new solutions built on the IBM Watson technology will be valuable for our provider partners, and more importantly, give us new tools to help ensure our members are receiving the best possible care."

About WellPoint

WellPoint works to simplify the connection between Health, Care and Value. We help to improve the health of our members and our communities, and provide greater value to our customers and shareholders. WellPoint is the nation's largest health benefits company in terms of medical membership, with 34 million members in its affiliated health plans, and a total of more than 70 million individuals served through its subsidiaries. As an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, WellPoint serves members as the Blue Cross licensee for California; the Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee for Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri (excluding 30 counties in the Kansas City area), Nevada, New Hampshire, New York (as the Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee in 10 New York City metropolitan and surrounding counties and as the Blue Cross or Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee in selected upstate counties only), Ohio, Virginia (excluding the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.), and Wisconsin. In a majority of these service areas, WellPoint does business as Anthem Blue Cross, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, or Empire Blue Cross (in the New York service areas). WellPoint also serves customers throughout the country as UniCare. Additional information about WellPoint is available at http://www.wellpoint.com/.

About IBM

For more information, please visit http://www.ibmwatson.com./
To join the social discussion about Watson, www.ibm.com/social/watson, include the hashtag #ibmwatson in a tweet.
Follow Watson on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ibmwatson.

SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT UNDER THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995

This press release contains forward-looking information that is intended to be covered by the safe harbor for "forward-looking statements" provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "expect(s)", "feel(s)", "believe(s)", "will", "may", "anticipate(s)", "intend", "estimate", "project" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, which generally are not historical in nature. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding plans, objectives and expectations with respect to future operations, products and services. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond our control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. These risks and uncertainties include technical, business, financial, regulatory and/or legal issues that may arise in the development and/or implementation of the proposed WellPoint Watson solution. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements that speak only as of the date hereof. Except to the extent otherwise required by federal securities law, we do not undertake any obligation to republish revised forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Readers are also urged to carefully review and consider the various disclosures in WellPoint's and IBM's SEC reports.

SOURCE: WellPoint, Inc.