Scott SerotaI’ve been carrying the October 28th New York Times Saturday Business Day section for months, to remind me to blog about a certain CEO interview. It wasn’t about John Thain, former White Knight of Wall Street; he was still basking in the glory of the reinvented Merrill Lynch. The “Saturday Interview” focused on Scott Serota, President and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. My curiosity was piqued, because my health insurance is covered by Empire Blue - Part F Medicare. While reading the article, I had to hold back the vomit several times, not from just Mr. Serota mug shot-ish photo, but also his unapologetic tone of answers. Bankers, Wall Street guys, Bernie Madoff, etc., you can assume that they would be craving money, because that’s all they know. Mr. Serota is overseeing the health of so many millions of people, but all he really care about it the bottom line: MONEY. You would think a guy that’s a CEO of a health care insurance company would be relatively in shape, maybe not like Phil Knight of Nike, but just check out that big schlep Serota. Even Mickey Drexel, formerly of Gap, Inc. (with I know for a fact,) ran every morning on his treadmill for an hour. When asked why Mr. Serota’s main goal was to cut diabetes costs, he responsed, “...57 million Americans today who are prediabetic. The cost of treating it is $116 billion annually. We treat it pretty well, but there are tangible things we can do in the areas of obesity, weight management, nutrition, fitness and health risk assessment to reduce the incidence of diabetes.” Well, why don’t you got of your lazy ass and exercise, try leading by example. Hmmm...aren’t we forgetting stroke and TBI traumatic-brain-injury, the most expensive medical condition, between patient care and rehabilitation, cancer, HIV preventative and AIDS!

This statement put me over the edge: “...we need to develop new products like high-deductible plans to attract people like the ’young invincibles’ -- who think they will never get sick -- and get them in the habit of buying coverage.”
This ain’t an episode of Hero’s!



First of all, DON’T call insurance a “product,” don’t even think it. I have a BFA in Product Design from Parsons, buddy. What’s with these “young invincibles,” they won’t be so invincible if they’re diagnosed with HIV and placed on super-expensive meds for the rest of their lives, but wouldn’t that make Mr. Serota and Big Pharma so happy. SUCK IT! Fumbling through a quick search on the web, I found a few insurance companies that donated to HIV prevention, but not at all enough. In an ideal world, I would prefer than the US health insurance companies crumble (as Wall Street and the Big Three,) only then we could start from scratch, where people’s HEALTH came first! Color me naïve.


Signed Young & Vincible,
Dplus