Docs Outraged across the US at Blue Cross Request

Update: Contents of the letter....and doctors react....cut cost or services for the members? BD

"We ask for your assistance to help identify medical omissions because you, being the primary care provider, will have firsthand knowledge of services provided or requested," the letter reads. "Within the first two years of membership, Blue Cross has the right to cancel the member's policy back to its effective date for failure to disclose medical history."

Others worry that such a system could prevent patients from getting needed care simply because it would become unaffordable without insurance. Telephone messages left with the press office of WellPoint Inc., the Indianapolis-based company that operates Blue Cross of California, were not immediately returned. A spokesperson for the company told the Los Angeles Times, who broke the story Tuesday morning, that the request was made in an effort to cut costs for members.

Others, like Dr. Sanjeev Saksena, say that the development should be regarded as a call for universal health care. "This is already being done in other surreptitious ways by all insurers," says Saksena, professor of medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
"One of these days our public will realize that not-for-profit payers are needed for health care and finally appreciate what all other Western nations know -- universal health care is needed and cannot be provided by the for-profit sector."