I got a call the other day from my friendly health insurance provider, Anthem Blue Cross, just checking in to see if I was due for a colonoscopy.

Wasn't that thoughtful?

For the record, I am not due for a colonoscopy, and Anthem knows that because it paid part of the bill for the last one. In other words, the friendly phone call was simply a marketing ploy intended to give me the impression that my health insurance company takes a personal interest in me.
I'm not buying it. But I can see why Anthem is looking for friends.

Health insurance companies have not had a good week. They have been fending off more shots than Ryan Miller, the goalie for the undefeated U.S. Olympic hockey team. On Tuesday, Anthem executives were hauled before a legislative committee in Sacramento to explain their plan to raise premiums 39 percent for some of the most vulnerable Californians, those who don't have health coverage through their employers.

The next day Angela Braly, the $9.5 million-a-year president and CEO of Wellpoint, Anthem's parent company, was grilled by a congressional panel for raising rates while posting a record profit of $4.75 billion, paying executives $1 million bonuses, spending $7.8 million to lobby lawmakers and blowing $27 million in two years on executive getaways.

Just making a buck

Braly's defense went something like this: Hey, we're a business, not a charity.

Our profits aren't nearly as obscene as the drug companies' profits. Why don't you go pick on them?

Score a save for Wellpoint.

Also on Wednesday, House Democrats and Republicans, who have done nothing but butt heads on health care, finally found a bill they all could love: a repeal of antitrust exemptions for health insurance companies.

That set the stage for President Obama's health care summit on Thursday, at which health insurance companies took a good pummeling.

Health insurers make attractive targets for lawmakers, who want to divert our attention from their failure to deliver on health care reform. The rate hikes are unconscionable, as are their practices of dropping people when they get sick and blackballing those with preexisting conditions. This year in particular, with so many Americans out of work, it's galling that Wellpoint would raise rates for those not covered by employer plans. Individual plans are exorbitant already. No wonder the five biggest insurance companies lost 2.7 million policy holders last year, according to a report by Heath Care for America Now.

We need health care reform

But who should we blame? Much as I'd like to, I don't fault the companies. They're just focused on their bottom line, like any other U.S. corporation. Without comprehensive reform, without real competition and a public option, they are free to squeeze us.

And they are free to spend money that could go toward health care on frills like robocalls about colonoscopies that promote their image. Insurers would argue that preventive care keeps medical costs down, but I'd rather they stick to their primary mission — negotiating rates and paying claims — and leave the medical decisions to my doctor and me. Anthem even has a nurse on call 24 hours a day to hand out medical advice over the phone, as if it were a doctor's office instead of just an insurance company.

And because Anthem wants to be my friend, all those little extras, which I don't want and didn't ask for, are available to me at absolutely no charge.

Yeah, right.

By Patty Fisher