{"id":14063,"date":"2011-12-14T02:49:02","date_gmt":"2011-12-14T02:49:02","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-12-14T02:49:02","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T02:49:02","slug":"blue-cross-claims-fake-credit-for-free-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2011\/12\/14\/blue-cross-claims-fake-credit-for-free-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Cross Claims Fake Credit for “Free” Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s stunts like this that drive Consumer Watchdog’s efforts to beat back the insurance lobby<\/a> and regulate untenable health insurance premiums.<\/p>\n

When I first noticed the ad below while hunting for cookie recipes, I was surprised to see a health insurance company buying a full page in the first pages of a cooking magazine. But reading it was another surprise. The headline touts “Free Annual Checkups,” and the text of the Anthem Blue Cross ad takes credit for this brand-new benefit: “100% coverage for checkups, flu shots and other preventive services.”<\/p>\n

Anthem, however, had nothing to do with the prevention benefit. It’s a requirement of the federal health reforms <\/a>passed last year. Blue Cross, along with every other major health insurer, fought to eliminate such mandatory benefits and later falsely blamed the law for outrageous, unjustified double-digit premium increases. (The prevention benefit is just one of the things that will disappear<\/a> if the courts or Congress succeed in voiding the health reform law.)<\/p>\n

Anthem must figure a deceptive claim of “free” care will make us feel better about insurance payments bigger than our mortgage.<\/p>\n

It’s stunts like this that drive Consumer Watchdog’s efforts to beat back the insurance lobby<\/a> and regulate untenable health insurance premiums.
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Posted by Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s stunts like this that drive Consumer Watchdog’s efforts to beat back the insurance lobby<\/a> and regulate untenable health insurance premiums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[2800,1976,2001,3320,9876],"class_list":["post-14063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-22","tag-2800","tag-1976","tag-2001","tag-3320","tag-9876"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3EP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}