Anthem sues the state of Maine over denial of request to increase rates

Anthem Blue Cross-Blue Shield, the largest insurance company in Maine, is suing the state of Maine over the denial of request to increase insurance rates. Anthem requested an increase in rates by as much as 37.8%, but was denied by Maine Insurance Superintendent Mila Kofman. The company claims the increase in cost is necessary to compensate for growing costs and an increase in the use of health care services. Anthem is a subsidiary of the national insurance company WellPoint, Inc.

Anthem Blue Cross-Blue Shield bought out a non-profit insurance company and has raised premium rates 10 times since. The average individual insurance-payer in Maine pays more than four times as much for insurance as they did ten years ago; before Anthem had a monopoly on the insurance market in Maine. The company controls about 79% of the Maine health care insurance market and provide service for more than 12,000 people statewide.

Anthem isn’t suing for an increase in insurance rates, but instead for a 3% guaranteed profit margin for 2010. Anthem’s rates have gone up 85% in the last 10 years in Maine. (3) A lawyer in the Attorney General’s office claims that going a year without a guaranteed profit will not drain the company and Mila Kofman calls Anthem’s request “excessive”. (3) Mila Kofman denied Anthem’s proposed average rate increase of 18.5% last year, instead approving a 10.9% increase. Anthem retaliated by suing the state and has proposed an average 23% increase for the year 2010. (2)

The state of Maine has no obligation to guarantee profits if the rate increases are discriminatory towards customers or excessive. Anthem is claiming that they are being discriminated against relative to other companies in Maine because another individual insurer in Maine was provided a 3% profit and risk margin for 2010. (1) Anthem claims this violates their equal protection rights under both the federal and state Constitutions. (4) However, there is no statute mandating that Maine provide Anthem or any other insurance company with a guaranteed profit.

President Obama notes rate hikes as a cautionary tale and previews “of coming attractions” (2) unless extensive health reform is executed. Joe Ditre, executive director of Consumers for Affordable Health Care, Maine’s largest consumer-health coalition, says that “health insurer’s profit expectations may have to change”. (2) “Companies are entitled to make some profit…however, it can’t be over the public good” he said. (2)

There have been many public events over the past year regarding Anthem. On March 18 at 5pm there will be protests outside the Cumberland County Courthouse, with speakers raising awareness of the issue. Citizens are being encouraged to attend the actual court case on March 19 to listen to Anthem state their case.

1. Dayen, David. (2009, October 5). WellPoint Sues Maine To Raise Premiums 18.5%. The Seminal. Retrieved from: http://www.seminal.firedoglake.com

2. De Hoyos, Martha. (2009, October 5). WellPoint, Inc. Subsidiary Sues State of Maine for Failing to Guarantee Annual Profit Margin of 3%. Common Dreams. Retrieved from: http://www.commondreams.org

3. Gerencher, Kristen. (2010, February 18). States grapple with health-insurer rate hikes. Market Watch. Retrieved from: http://marketwatch.com

4. Huang, Josie. (2009, October 5). Anthem Sues State of Maine over Rate Hike Request Denial. MPBN. Retrieved from: http://www.mpbn.net

5. Thompson, Adam. (2009, October 8). Health Insurer Sues Maine for Guaranteed Profits. Progressive States. Retrieved from: http://www.progressivestates.org

News Release

Greek-wide talent show brings fraternities and sororities together

Sasha Kauffman, February 20, 2010 The bi-annual Greek talent show is this Thursday night February 18, 2010 at 7pm. Every semester, during Fall Greek Week and Spring Greek Winter Carnival, Greeks put on a talent show. The show celebrates the creative talents and friendly competition of fraternities and sororities once a semester.

Each semesters’ [Greek] week has a different theme. This semester’s theme is Disney and Greeks will be performing to and dressed to Disney in the show. Nine fraternities and five sororities will be participating in the event, of the 18 fraternities and seven sororities on campus.

Greek Week and Greek Winter Carnival are week-long competitions between fraternities and sororities on campus. Greeks compete for the most points through various participation events all week. This semester there was a canned food drive, snowball fight, sled race and Disney trivia, among other events. Every semester there is letter sign-in day, when Greeks wear their letters all day and compete to sign-in the most members for their chapter.

The talent show is the largest and final event of the week. Fraternities and sororities dress-up, choreograph dance routines, act and sing during the show. The acts represent the individuality and creativity of each chapter and are funny and in good-spirit.

Last semester’s talent show was a Nickelodeon theme. Greeks dressed up as characters such as Doug from ‘Doug’ and cat-dog from ‘Cat-dog’. They wrote songs, played musical instruments and performed dance routines. This semester’s theme has brought as much excitement and entertainment as the last. It is a theme that every student is familiar with and grew up with. Disney characters and songs being performed in the talent show include the Mickey Mouse Club, the Lion King, Peter Pan, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.

This semester’s talent show is in Minsky hall and free to all students. For further details contact Gustavo Burkett on First Class. [For immediate release]

Profile

Jasmine Dawn looks like your average college student. She’s blonde, attractive, blue-eyed and always smiling. She lives in the dorms, eats lunch at the Union, works on campus and goes to class most days. But what sets her apart from the average UMaine student is that she’s straightedge and LDS. What makes her even more different? She used to have a mohawk and colored hair and used to experiment with the things most teenagers experiment with.

Jasmine is a first-year modern language major. She’s an eighteen-year-old girl from Farmington, New Hampshire. She doesn’t drink, she doesn’t smoke, she abstains from sex until marriage and she attends church every weekend. Is this hard for her? No, she says. “People say it’s hard being straightedge in college, but it’s not a struggle for me because those things don’t tempt me” she explains. Flashback to the 15 year-old Jasmine and you’ll see a girl with a green mohawk, going to hardcore shows and the occasional party on the weekends. Around this time, she began going to church with her grandmother and “decided to follow the teachings of LDS.” She decided to become straightedge and LDS because “[she] had to pick what was best for [her], and deducted that the straightedge lifestyle was best for [her].”

The University of Maine was not her first-choice school. Her dream school is Brigham Young University in Utah, a university where 98% of the students are Mormon. But she liked UMaine after visiting a couple of times and feels a sense of security and place here. “I came from a really small town, where everybody, including myself, is pretty close-minded. But I’ve grown to be a lot more open-minded since being here.” On move-in day her first thought was about being afraid of “having to deal with all these drunk people running around and puking all over the place coming home from parties,” but she’s learned to accept these people and “understand that people live different lifestyles.”

The people who know the 18 year-old Jasmine Dawn could never imagine her as the 15 year-old Jasmine Dawn. But she’s proud of who she’s become and the things she’s abstained from. The biggest problem she’s encountered from her lifestyle is people judging her and “thinking [she’s] lame and that [she doesn’t] go out and do things, because [she has] just as much fun as anyone else.” A daily struggle that she has is the fact that people she met at UMaine don’t know how she used to be, and they don’t understand that she struggles with a lot of temptations here, but she’s remained true to her lifestyle and she continues to have the desire to live the straightedge lifestyle.

Assignment 4-1

This WCSH6 news report was about a man who died in a rare shark attack off the coast of Florida. The story isn’t local, but the news reporter interviewed one of the victim’s closest friends in Florida, so the story had some good sources of background information.

This newscast was in past tense, with all verb tenses in agreement-in past tense. The report was told through mostly active voice, with a subject, verb, object composition. The sentences were pretty short and directly to the point, but were a little too succinct for me. If I had been in charge of editing copy before the story was aired, I would have provided more details about how the man died because the reporter failed to state his cause of death, The reporter only said the victim had been bitten by a shark and died later at the hospital. If I were in charge of this newscast, I would have wanted to provide more details about why the man was out in the water, how the shark bit him and how he died. The newscast did a good job putting in background information from an interview with one of the victim’s closest friends. I would have made the sentences a little more detailed; with longer sentences instead of many brief sentences that seemed a little too short.

I would have connected the story with past deaths in the area due to sharks, or the reason the attack was so “rare”. It would have been nice to know the history of shark attacks in the area and if there were often sharks near that beach. I think this would have added some human interest to the story, and left the listener less confused. I would have interviewed the lifeguard and gotten more details on how the man was found, how long he had been in distress and maybe some comments from his family. I would have liked the story to be more descriptive and easier to relate too.