The GirlAlive Blog

About my former employer.

This post is more serious/political than I usually get, but I found myself ranting about this to everyone around me, and they’re sick of it, so I decided to just post it already.

William McGuire, the now former CEO of United Health Group, has been in the news lately because of back-dating stock options.  As my dad put it, "He pulled an Enron."  I used to work for United Health Group, and I can tell you that his greed and corruption isn’t the only greed and corruption in that company.  In fact, it is only the tip of the iceberg.

I was a claims processor at United for about a year while I was preparing to move to Scotland.  I found nothing but corruption and abuse of employees.

In my team, we were behind in our work because there were about 25 fewer processor than we really needed, so the Bosses (the manager’s managers, who we never saw) declared that everyone must work 10 hours a week of mandatory overtime.  At the same time that everyone was forced to work 50 hour weeks, quotas were increased to unrealistic levels.  At one point, the even implemented "quiet time", where for 6 hours a day we were not allowed to speak to each other.  It was a sweatshop with cubicles.  And why do the employees put up with this abuse?  In Northern Minnesota, United is literally the only place hiring.  There are no other jobs, and if there were, who has time to look for them when you’re working 50 hours a week?

What really made me mad about this abuse was the reasoning behind it.  United has a policy of merit-based raises only.  If you do not meet or exceed the goals they set for you, you do not get even a cost of living increase.  The claims processors had to process over 300 claims a day with 99.5% accuracy, or they did not get a raise.  The middle managers had to get all of their employees to produce those goals, or they did not get a raise.  The Bosses had to meet their budget for the year.  Do you see the problem here?  I do.

The best way the Bosses can meet their goals and make sure to get themselves a hefty raise is to set unrealistic and downright abusive goals for the employees.  If the processors can’t meet their goals, no one below the Bosses gets a raise, so the Boss gets a hefty raise because they stayed well within their budget.  If they did anything to benefit the employees, like creating a nice working atmosphere or hiring enough people to cover the workload, that would cost money.  There would be extra wages to pay and raises to pay if people started meeting goals.  And then they might go over-budget, and the Boss would have to give up his dream of a third summer home.  So because of upper-level greed, my friend Heidi didn’t see her kids for 3 or 4 days at a time because she was working such long hours.  Several of my co-workers were hospitalized for stress-related illness.  (Think about that for a second.  A health insurance company overworked their employees into the hospital.)

United doesn’t just abuse their employees.  They completely screw over their customers as well.  I worked in the mental health division.  There were a lot of health plans where people were actually paying for mental health coverage where they had a minimum of 20 visits and a $5000 deductible.  So they would go to visit after visit, and have to pay for every single visit until their deductible was paid.  And then by the time they had paid off their deductible, all of their claims were denied for being over the 20 visit limit.  There was no way any of their claims would ever get paid.  You’d be better off getting imaginary health insurance from a greasy guy working out of the back of a van.  At least then you’d logically expect to get screwed.

I now live in a country with national health care.  It has its problems, but I still think it is better than the deep corruption I saw in the health insurance industry.  I don’t know if I could ever live in the US again, and the number one reason I don’t want to go back is health insurance.  I hate the waiting lists and government red tape in the health system here in the UK, but it is merely inefficient and incompetent.  Health insurance companies are malignant evil pretending to be merely incompetent. 

Alana

Tattoo pictures and a calendar.

So I just finished making a new product in my online store.  It is a calendar with sexy adorable shots of my guinea pigs and hamster.  You can find it at the cafepress girlalive shop.

While I had the camera out, I also took some pictures of the tattoos me and my husband got for our anniversary.

This is mine (it is at the top of my forearm with the tail on my upper arm).

And this is my husband’s tattoo, on his upper arm.

So those are our tattoos.  Mine isn’t completely healed yet.  But it’s getting there.

Go and buy my calendar.  It is silly, and there are cute guinea pigs.

Alana 

Juli and Dave

I forgot to mention that there is a blog that I’ve been reading every day, and it is amazing.  It is http://thebeautifulfeet.blogspot.com/.

This blog is written by Juli Christiansen, who is a member of my parents’ church in Duluth, and I knew her back in college, back when she was just dating Dave.  Now they are married and they have a whole mess of kids.  Along with the ones Juli gave birth to, they adopted a little girl named Elisha, who is from Sierra Leone.  Now Juli and the kids are living in Sierra Leone while they fight through the government red tape to be able to adopt Elisha’s brother Joseph.  It’s fascinating and funny and touching.  Read it from the beginning, and keep reading.  She posts nearly every day.

Alana 

Fishy

This week was my pseudo-anniversary.  It was one year since my husband and I pretended to get married in front of all my friends and family.  I have now been living in Scotland for a year.  I am starting to appreciate tea everywhere, and I am even starting to talk like the people here (except that I still refuse, as a card-carring adult, to refer to a cookie or biscuit as a "bikkie"; I have my limits).  I still miss Seattle and I miss friendly people.  On the radio they said that Edinburgh was recently voted the unfriendliest city in the UK.  I can’t disagree.

To celebrate our pretend anniversary, my husband and I went out and got more tattoos.  He got a pacific northwest native American serpenty sort of thing on his upper arm.  I got a little orange fishy on my left forearm.  All the women in my office are fascinated/concerned by my new tattoo.  Fascinated because none of them have tattoos, and some don’t even have basic pierced ears.  (Oh, and I got an extra piercing in my ear because I got bored while waiting for my husband’s tattoo to get done.)  And they’re concerned because it has been very red and sore.  It is red and sore because the body of the fish is on my forearm and the tail extends upwards onto my upper arm.  It looks all cool, but getting tattooed near the inside of the elbow joint hurts like you wouldn’t believe.  And it is very thin skin there, so it bled all over, and is still bruised a little.

I’ll show you pictures someday.  I need to wait until it stops flaking and isn’t all gross.

Alana