Word: shield
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Next stanza: In the Line of Fire, a just-above-par melodrama about a Secret Service agent haunted by having botched his protection of John F. Kennedy nearly 30 years ago in Dallas and now assigned to shield the current President from a would-be assassin. Frank Horrigan (Eastwood) is your basic borderline burn-out with questionable social skills. He's a beast from the past, Clintosaurus rex, who believes that the things he knows about people will compensate for his diminished physical resources. His opponent, Mitch Leary (John Malkovich), is your basic twisted genius, a rogue warrior with dead...
...former customers ever get a chance to confront him, Albert Cardone may need plenty of health insurance. Before his ouster in May as chairman of New York's Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, he took home $600,000 a year in his chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car. The salary and transportation were paid for by the nation's largest nonprofit health insurer at a time when it was trying to stave off insolvency by drastically raising the premiums of the elderly, the poor and the chronically sick. But, as Cardone once asked a New York Times reporter...
What makes the Empire story so sad is how familiar it is. Some $70 billion flows annually through the U.S. system of 70 not-for-profit Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies, which control more than 30% of the private health- insurance market. While the majority of the "Blues" are financially sound, others, like Empire, have been walloped by spiraling health costs and "cherry picking" -- the loss of the best customers to for-profit rivals. Gross mismanagement and lax oversight in many states have raised urgent questions: Can the Blues still carry out their mission as insurers of last resort...
...Hampshire regulators had to intervene when the state's Blue Cross and Blue Shield exhausted its cash reserves. West Virginia's Blue ran out of money three years ago, leaving 51,000 individuals with unpaid claims. Investigators discovered that among other unethical management practices, executives had funneled Blue Cross money to businesses in which they had a financial interest...
...Blues. Many have become stronger by merging with other companies. Last year 17 of the plans were in very bad shape, according to Weiss Research, an insurance rating firm. Today Weiss says only 11 are hurting, yet those plans serve 16 million Americans. Meanwhile the Blue Cross and Blue Shield trade group boasts that net income for the 70 plans was $736 million in the first quarter of 1993, up from $349 million last year...