A few words about Kaiser Permanente and eKaiser Insurance

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.