Service Issue: Maybe a Little TOO Personal

[Welcome Industry Radar readers!]

Regular readers know that I'm no carrier's shill. In fact, I have a favorite saying about insurers:

'Not all carriers are run by idiots - some are run by morons.'

And some, apparently, are run by Lothario's:

"In a cluster of lawsuits gathered up by The Associated Press, the former chief financial officer of health insurance giant WellPoint Inc. is depicted as a corporate Casanova — a world-class, love-'em-and-leave-'em sort of guy who romanced dozens of women around the country simultaneously, made them extravagant promises and then went back on his word with all the compassion of a health insurance company denying a claim."

Now, in fairness, that last was a cheap shot: most claims aren't denied, and carriers don't exhibit compassion because they're not people, they're corporations.

My usual beef with carriers is their heavy-handedness at renewal time, and the stupid "press one for this, two for that" phone systems that make it unnecessarily difficult to get to a real, live human being (although this disease affects many large businesses, it's particularly frustrating when I've got an unhappy client on one line, while trying to connect with a CSR on another).

But this is a new one. Apparently, this guy's job didn't keep him busy enough, so he had plenty of time to cat around. There's an obvious line here about what insurers supposedly do to their insured's, and the term "ironic" seems apt, but I'll resist the urge.