The nation's two largest health insurers have been pressuring employees to lobby against healthcare reform in Congress in violation of a California law against coerced political activity, a consumer group alleged Wednesday.
Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica has asked California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown to investigate its claim that UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint Inc. pushed workers to write their elected officials, attend town hall meetings and enlist family and friends to ensure an overhaul that matches their interests.
Christine Gasparac, a spokeswoman in Brown's office, said the call for an investigation was being reviewed.
In a website message to the company's 75,000 employees, UnitedHealth's executive vice president and chief of medical affairs, Reed Tuckson, said he had "strong concerns" with some of the proposals and called for a bipartisan plan -- shorthand for heeding Republican opposition to any government-run option. He urged workers to contact an "advocacy specialist" with the company's lobbying group to "educate and assist" them in getting involved, including during working hours.
WellPoint, whose Anthem Blue Cross unit is the largest for-profit insurer in California and employs 8,000, took a more overtly negative tack.
"Regrettably, the congressional legislation, as currently passed by four of the five key committees in Congress, does not meet our definition of responsible and sustainable reform," Anthem said in a company e-mail last week. The proposals would hurt the company by "causing tens of millions of Americans to lose their private coverage and end up in a government-run plan."
The appeals amount to illegal coercion under California law, Consumer Watchdog research director Judy Dugan said. "While coercive communications with employees may be legal, if abhorrent, in most states, California's labor code appears to directly prohibit them," said Dugan, citing sections forbidding employers from "tending to control or direct" or "coercing or influencing" employees' political activities or affiliations.
The insurers denied their suggestions were inappropriate or aimed at defeating reform.
"Assertions that UnitedHealth Group has encouraged employees to attend anti-reform rallies are completely false and untrue," said Cheryl Randolph, spokeswoman for the Minnesota-based insurer.
