I found a recent op ed by retired John Hancock executive Stephen Brown of Cape Cod amazingly hypocritical.
Mr. Brown seems to say good private retiree insurance is OK for Mr. Brown but he wants to screw the rest of us retirees living down here on the Cape.
Brown's hypocrisy covered multiple levels
- Maybe Brown hasn't read the Wyden-Ryan proposal for Medicare Reform. According to his resignation agreement, Brown is almost assuredly getting his key retiree health-care insurance from a private company that sells through some exchange/retirement-group arrangement just like Wyden-Ryan proposes (that's what Brown's original resignation agreement called for but he may now be self insuring due to great wealth; maybe his resignation agreement with Hancock was changed by the subsequent takeover by Manulife).
- All Wyden-Ryan is proposing is the same sort of arrangement for all the rest of us poor Cape Cod Medicare retirees as Brown had when he turned 65. (I say he has great wealth above because I assume he did not blow through all the money he received from Hancock in his golden parachute and any further millions he made on the Manulife acquisition.)
- Back in the late 1990s, Brown ran John Hancock when it administered a retiree and employee insurance exchange/group arrangement1 for the state of Massachusetts' Group Insurance Commission (GIC). Actually I am not sure if Hancock covered both retiree and employee insurance for GIC or just one or the other. What Massachusetts and other self-insured entities outsourced to John Hancok is the same sort of set up Wyden-Ryan wants to provide for us Medicare retirees today, replacing the terrible insurance that is "Medicare as we know it" unless a senior wanted it for some unexplained reason.
- When Brown was running John Hancock did he not notice that one of his major local competitors -- Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts -- was the private insurer "running" traditional Medicare in Massachusetts and other New England states? He may have even tried to get the traditional Medicare business himself or offered a Medicare Part C Choice plan through the GIC, just the way insurance companies will try to under the highly regulated Medicare proposal of Wyden-Ryan.
Finally Brown's op ed has the inevitable Obama-re-election-campaign talking point
"Soon the costs will fall on the elderly..."
You mean "soon" as in 2022 don't you, you hypocrite?
-- Dennis Byron
1Brown sold the unit that worked with GIC to out-of-state Unicare, screwing a bunch of Massachusetts Hancock employees out of a good retirement deal not unlike the one he later received from Hancock.
