Oh, the humanity

The other day Anthem, a subsidiary of health care evil corporation Wellpoint, announced that they were going to jack their rates 39%. Why? Well they only made $2.7 billion last quarter and are part of a group of health care giants that collectively only grossed a record $12.2 billion in profits last year while dropping coverage for 2.7 million Americans. Wellpoint's profit margin is only 7.3%. They're hurting.

Well this little bit of money grubbing hubris was too much for even Fox News, who looked at this state of events and harshly scolded Wellpoint and Anthem... for poor timing and possibly helping Democrats make the case that reform is urgently needed. Priorities, people.

PAYNE: But Brad this is like Jaws 2, just when you thought it was safe to get out of the healthcare debate, you brought everybody back into it. [...] Didn’t someone though, wasn’t there a committee that said listen, let’s take Wall Street’s lead, do the minimum we can, wait for this to blow over and maybe a year from now try to hike rates?

VARNEY: You handed the politicians red meat at a time when healthcare is being discussed. You gave it to them!

That's populism I can believe in. How dare an insurance company so openly show exactly what they're about and prove a point about the urgent need for reform. Don't they know what's at stake here? The health and coverage of people? Pssht. Whatever. This might embolden hippies and those who are sympathetic to their hippie goals! We were almost past this! Democrats had almost completely given up! Now a few of them might groggily scratch their heads, stumble to their feet and mutter "...oh yeah, now I remember". Don't you see what you've done while nobly trying to attain your goal of siphoning gobs of money off of people while giving them zero coverage? Think!

Thankfully they've heard the call, realized just how many liberals this might embolden, how they were taking steps to make sure "health insurance giant" replaced "Nazis" as the de facto movie villain, and have thankfully decided to scuttle the proposed rate hike... for a couple months. It seems that massively unpopular decisions effect a bottom line more than rate increases do.

So: bullet momentarily dodged. Jsut be a little more careful the next time you try to jacks rates. Take Fox News' concerns about emboldening Democrats to heart. I mean, after all, they're only looking out for you. Maybe next time, try a little better name marketing. Instead of an "egregious cash grab" try for a more friendly sounding "temporary rate cut adjustment". It'll do wonders for your PR.