Steep Health Insurance Increases for Individual Policyholders

The article about Blue Cross rate hikes angered me even more than the $1,200 increase we just received (“Blue Cross to Hike Some Rates 25%, Cut Benefits,” Part I, June 8).

A Blue Cross spokeswoman states that the average cost of coverage after the latest increase will be $1,728 per family per year. That is a lie. Our premium today, for just my husband and me, is $5,400 per year.

Ever since I had my mastectomy 18 months ago, Blue Cross has increased the premium regularly. The latest was a 36% increase of $1,200 a year.

We purchased Blue Cross because of its once great reputation. For 15 years we’ve paid our premiums promptly. The first 13 of those years were uneventful. Then cancer invaded. To have my breast amputated was devastating, but at least I knew Blue Cross would pay most of the expenses. Blue Cross paid, after four months and constant aggravation.

I elected to have reconstruction from the moment I knew I had cancer. If Blue Cross dragged its feet paying my mastectomy bills it came to a screeching halt when confronted with my reconstruction expenses. As I write, the payment for the final portion of my reconstruction has still not been paid by Blue Cross.

Blue Cross takes months to pay its obligations. Not so for its policyholders. Clients with a serious illness such as cancer are presented a bill three weeks before due. A note accompanies that bill stating, “If premium is late, this policy is cancelled.”

There must be hundreds of thousands of private clients with Blue Cross who, like us, work for a living--associate professors who are not covered on the job, people who work for small companies and do not have group policies. These are the customers squeezed tightest by Blue Cross.

Blue Cross knows that any time one of its members gets cancer no other insurance company will touch that person. And so, the private citizen who is not a member of a group becomes a victim of Blue Cross’ extortion.

The salesman who sold us the contract 15 years ago smiled at us then and said, “Blue Cross will always protect you.” I’ve paid for years so that I would not lose everything if I became ill. I feel threatened and unprotected. I feel scared.

Lies--blackmail--extortion. Is that now the American way? Or just the way of Blue Cross?

LOLA D. GILLEBAARD

South Laguna