TPMMuckraker

Health Insurer Urged Employees To Fight Reform — “Our Livelihood” At Stake

It looks like Express Scripts isn’t the only company that’s pressing its employees to take action in opposition to health-care reform.

Last month, as the Post Standard of Syracuse, New York reports, David Klein, CEO of the health insurer Excellus BlueCross BlueShield emailed employees to ask them to fill out postcards to New York’s senators, urging them to oppose the creation of a public option.

Klein’s email warned that such a plan would destroy the private insurance market. “[O]ur livelihood depends on health-system reform that achieves the right balance between what government can do and what private plans do best,” he wrote.

As the paper notes, Klein made $2.73 million last year. So his livelihood probably isn’t at stake here.

A spokeswoman told the paper: “On major issues of business-wide importance, we have given employees an opportunity to become involved — and always voluntarily.”

Hours after that story appeared, the company sent out a followup email telling employees how their family and friends could fill out their own postcards. An internal block prevented employees from forwarding the email, but TPMmuckraker obtained a screen-shot of it.

Editor & Publisher

Josh Marshall

Managing Editor

David Kurtz

Senior Associate Editor

Paul Werdel

Associate Editor

Sara Libby

Assistant Editor

Igor Bobic

Reporters

Brian Beutler

Carl Franzen

Sahil Kapur

Eric Kleefeld

Eric Lach

Nick Martin

Evan McMorris-Santoro

Ryan J. Reilly

Benjy Sarlin

Front Page Editor

David Taintor

Poll Editor

Kyle Leighton

News Writer

Pema Levy

Video Editor

Michael Lester

Polling Fellow

Tom Kludt

Video Fellow

Clayton Ashley

Research Interns

Michael Brooks

Publishing Intern

Christopher O’Driscoll

Miles Read

General Manager & General Counsel

Millet Israeli

VP, Ad Sales

Bruce Ellerstein

Waldo Tibbetts

Bob Edmunds

Manager, Ad Operations and Sales Support

Versha Sharma

Deputy Publisher

Callie Schweitzer

Director of Technology

Eric Buth

Designer/Developer

Ni Mu

Matthew Wozniak

Tech Fellow

Dennis Cahillane