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Ahhh, good old Michael McCallister, the Humana head honcho, the $60 million dollar CEO.

What's his little company been up to lately? Let's go see...

Well, for one thing they've been mailing misleading literature about health reform to senior citizens. This is especially disgusting as nearly two-thirds of their revenue comes from Medicare Advantage or, as they like to call it, the Golden Goose.

Let's see... what else?

Oh, one of their former employees, Linda Peeno recently blabbed about the company's business methods to members of Congress. The highlights include her being told that her job not only requires her to deny coverage but that the medical reviewer (her position) with the highest denial rate got a Christmas bonus. How jolly!

In addition, at the same time she was denying a heart transplant, the office was installing a piece of scuplture that could have paid for the transplant.

Oops! Make that eight transplants as the sculpture cost $3.8 million dollars.

Next, Cleve Killingsworth, CEO of Blue Cross/Blue Shield. His salary jumped 25% to $3.5 million last year, even though the company's net income slid 49%.

Mr. Killingsworth's company is similar to several insurance company's at the moment in that they are denying coverage if a woman has been raped.

As an example, a 28-year-old woman was recently raped and while at the hospital revealed she'd also been assaulted when she was 17. Blue Cross summarily denied payment for her treatment and would not pay for medication or trauma because "she had been raped before".

Another example, though not a client of Blue Cross, was drugged and raped by two men she met at a bar. After taking anti-AIDS medicine she can no longer get health insurance. The irony? She was a former health insurance underwriter.

On October 15th, 2009, Dawn Smith — who has a brain tumor her insurer has refused to help treat — traveled from her home in Atlanta, Georgia to request a meeting with H. Edward Hanway, CEO of the health insurance giant CIGNA. She has been a victim of a series of insurance company abuses, and she wanted to give both Hanway and leaders in Congress a message. Hanway refused to meet with Smith, and instead dispatched his Cheif Medical Officer Jeff Kang to listen to her. Kang admitted that CIGNA’s complex claims unit requires serious changes but said his company would not even review the possibility of paying for her care until November.

Smith, a premiums-paying customer of CIGNA, was diagnosed with a type of brain tumor in 2005, then another one in 2007. Although CIGNA covered her brain biospy and some medication payments, she has battled with the insurer for years because of multiple denials of payment for the specialized care she needs to cure the tumors. After paying out-of-pocket for care in one instance, CIGNA nearly doubled her premiums anyway. In early October, a CIGNA representative told her that the co-pay on her anti-epileptic medicine was being hiked by more than $3,000 a year.

With the assistance of MoveOn.org, Smith has launched a nationwide campaign to not only receive the treatments she deserves from her insurance company, but to help reform the entire system and help all Americans gain quality, affordable healthcare. ThinkProgress asked Smith what message she has for Congress:

DAWN SMITH: I would encourage them to hear the stories from their citizens because, you know, a lot of people talk about the cost [to] children of our future, our grandchildren. But, there are grandchildren dying now. There are children dying now. […] I don’t understand how you can justify ‘die now, so we can save money later.’ Because that’s what it is; that’s what it boils down to.

CIGNA has a long history of denying care for its own policyholders. One of the most infamous cases involves Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old who died after CIGNA refused to cover her liver transplant. When Nataline’s mother requested a meeting with CIGNA officials, employees of CIGNA reportedly started heckling her from a balcony above the building’s lobby, with one giving her “the finger.”

Rather than use Smith’s or Sarkisyan’s premium dollars to pay for life-saving medical treatments, CIGNA has poured its cash into lobbying against health reform. Those premium dollars are also spent on two private luxory jets, sky-high CEO compensation (Hanway was paid $25.8 million in 2007 alone), and profits.

Don't worry about Killingsworth, my BCBS rates were increased for next year so I'm sure he'll be ok with his new salary!

Stepen J. Hemlsley, CEO of United HealthCare, back to put a happy face on his company's heartless cruelty, although this time a subsidiary of United HealthCare, Golden Rule, is the actual villain.

It seems that a young woman named Peggy Robertson of Centennial, Colorado had recently delivered a baby via c-section. Afterwards she decided to get some health insurance but Golden Rule told her she was inelegible for their plans because of the c-section. They told her that they would consider her for coverage if she had herself sterilized.

Yes, sterilize yourself, they said, and everything's hunky-dory.

Keep in mind this is a normal, healthy young woman and but for the fact that she had a c-section she could not be insured.

I hate all bureaucracies . I can't decide which I hate more , government , banks , or insurance companies . On further thought , government has to be # 1 because they have more power , but banks and insurance companies are in the running .

I don't know, Rod. The banks and insurance companies have power over the government, so it would seem to be a toss-up between those two.

Dennis J. Manning, CEO of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. His company paid out $723 million dollars in dividends in2008 on profits of $437 million, a rise of almost 50% over the previous year. The company currently has $4.3 billion in capital reserves.

One of their clients, a Mr. Ian Pearl is a victim of muscular dystrophy and requires a tube down his throat to breathe. Thanks to a business life insurance policy taken out from Mr. Manning's company Ian's family can afford the $1 million each year required for his care.

But it seems that $1 million a year is too much of a burden for Guardian's investors, and since they cannot legally cancel Mr. Pearl's policy individually they simply cancelled the entire line of insurance. No one knows exactly how many other policy holders got the shaft but for Mr. Pearl this is a death sentence.

This isn't new but it is on topic:

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** His company paid out $723 million dollars in dividends in2008 on profits of $437 million, **

Doing the math says that they paid $1.65 in dividends for every profit dollar. Wonderful for a shareholder to find a company that pays 165%. Too bad for me that my personal ethics wouldn't allow me to do that on something like heath care. I didn't buy the pharmaceutical company that was paying off at $1.45 on the dollar last year either.