And you thought BCBS were the good guys…

When we moved from Massachusetts to Minnesota, we learned the consequences of state laws for insurance coverage. In Massachusetts, for-profit HMO’s were allowed, and via a complicated process of having to respond to commercial lobbying, the state managed to make it hard to get basic kinds of health care (like physical therapy for Alex’s hemiparesis) but possible to get complicated, expensive stuff like infertility treatments. Minnesota, on the other hand, had fought for-profit HMO’s, and the laws here made basic kinds of care — like physical therapy — possible, while other kinds of more speculative medicine less accessible.

We've ended up in a BCBS policy, as that's what my employer makes available, and it's been ok. But it's still required the usual amount of bickering on the phone to get them to do what their policy says they're going to do. Still, I tended to think of BCBS as "the good guys" who were nonprofit. How wrong I was! Here's a lengthy diary that explore the BCBS network, and makes clear that it's a franchise -- operating a lot like most other commercial franchises. And these days, fighting tooth and nail against single payer health care.