A few words about Kaiser Permanente and eKaiser Insurance

Money can’t buy integrity, but it sure buys a lot of PRBS™, according to a recent review from Kotaku of Kaiser Permanente’s new video health game for kids, the Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective.

Kaiser Permanente’s Health Game Flatlines

Exactly how much member money KP has spent creating and promoting its thinly disguised infomercial is unknown, because when asked direct questions about such things, this not for profit public benefit corporation feels no obligation whatsoever to be forthcoming with the public it supposedly serves. What we do know is that health care expenditures in the United States have reached $2 trillion per year, and are continually rising. When I’m writing that $1,000 monthly premium check to my health insurer on behalf of my small family, I want to know that as much of that money as possible is being applied to actual health care costs — and NOT to advertising and public relations.

When its name is Kaiser Permanente and it reports $2.5 billion in net profits in the first 9 months of 2007, that’s when.

Ironically, the IRS nearly tripled its audits of tax returns filed by middle class Americans in 2007, because they wouldn’t want anyone to get away with not paying their fair share of taxes.

God Bless America.

Kaiser Permanente surgeon Bruce Barker pleaded guilty to perjury last week. It has been suggested that a willingness to play fast and loose with the truth might be a desirable quality in a Kaiser doctor (for Kaiser the organization and its medical legal department, that is), but who are we to say? Maybe it’s only a coincidence that medical records end up missing in virtually every Kaiser case that makes it to arbitration.

According to the LA Daily News, Kaiser Permanente has been dumping homeless patients on skid row again:

New homeless dumping allegation probed

BY KERRY CAVANAUGH, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 07/12/2007 09:49:29 PM PDT

The City Attorney’s Office is investigating whether Kaiser Permanente dumped a homeless patient on Skid Row, in violation of a settlement reached in a previous case.

The latest inquiry began after officials learned that workers from Kaiser’s Baldwin Hills hospital took a 26-year-old man with severe back pain to homeless shelters downtown against his will, officials said.

I can’t wait to see how the PRBS’ers try to spin this one. So far it looks like they are saying the patient agreed in writing to be dumped (yeah, right), but as anyone who has ever found themselves in an adversarial position against Kaiser knows all too well,  they have a nasty little habit of falsifying documentation to mislead investigators and get themselves out of trouble.

I hope LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo throws the book at ‘em.

Thanks to kaiserthrive.org for this animation, which is a parody of one of Kaiser’s Thrive ads:

Edelman PR is the agency Kaiser has hired for its online PRBS campaign. If the name sounds familiar you may recognize it from Wal-mart “war room” fame. Not exactly an ethical bunch, which makes them a great match for Kaiser Permanente and eKaiser Insurance.

Still, these people are human and I always wonder what they really think about Kaiser. They spend so much time online reading about Kaiser’s dirty deeds, they have to be just a little bit disgusted. It’s one thing pushing a discount store or a product like a car. By deliberately misleading people about the quality of health care they will receive at Kaiser, and trying to discredit critics, that’s a personal contribution to the suffering.

Some people believe that if an endeavor is worth money it is worth doing. Others like me worry about what this “anything for a buck” mentality means for the future of our society.

From the stats:

VISITOR ANALYSIS
Referring Link	No referring link
Host Name	host2.por.edelman.com
IP Address	12.154.206.2
Country	United States
Region	Oregon
City	Portland
ISP	Edelman Pr
Returning Visits	0
Visit Length	4 mins 31 secs
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser	MSIE 7.0
Operating System	Windows XP
Resolution	Unknown
Javascript	Disabled

Navigation Path

Date	Time	WebPage
May 24th 2007	10:59:20 AM	No referring link
May 24th 2007	11:03:51 AM	No referring link

Kaiser Foundation Health Plan is a not-for-profit integrated prepaid health plan and HMO. Unlike most HMOs that contract with independent facilities and doctors, Kaiser owns and operates its own hospitals, and employs its own physicians through an exclusive contract with the for-profit Permanente Medical Groups. It is very important to understand how the three Kaiser entities work together, and how the money flows in order to fully appreciate why I have volunteered for this campaign.

A good source of information about Kaiser Permanente’s history and organizational structure is here.

More to come…

We will be exploring more about Kaiser Permanente and eKaiser Insurance in the days to come. In the meantime, if you are interested in helping us to get the truth out about Kaiser and its new eKaiser Insurance internet brand campaign, please leave a comment on one of our posts.