Pletzke's Chapel Hill Blog

As unbelievable as it sounds, some HealthPartners employees are talking about striking over *their* health insurance benefits, as I found at the Minneapolis Saint Paul Business Journal and Pioneer Press. At issue is the need for employees to pay a portion of their medical premium, and a change in the way prescriptions are paid.

Obvious to management is that the costs associated with the group have gone up due to the utilization of medicine, but apparently that same point of view is not shared by the workers. What can management do? They can cave in to the demands of the workers, and find another way to pay the difference: by increasing costs, and premiums to create a larger margin in operations to cover the costs.

But, you may ask, what about corporate profits, and those blood-suckers who run the insurance side of HealthPartners? HealthPartners is the largest consumer-governed, nonprofit health care organization in the nation.

Jonathan Pletzke is a consumer expert on health insurance and author of the health insurance book Get a Good Deal on Your Health Insurance Without Getting Ripped-Off, available online and at bookstores nationally. Additional details can be found at the consumers health insurance book and resources website www.BestHealthInsuranceBook.com. Copyright 2007-2008 Aji Publishing.