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Thursday,
August 23,
2007, #161 (1428)
Hundreds of thousand
of state health insurance vouchers, meant to help the poor, are sure
money for insurance companies-and politicians are kicking up a fuss
over the companies' efforts to get their hands on them. The sales techniques are both imaginative and, critics charge, exploitative. Insurance companies are offering sugar, flour, vegetable oil or even money to the pensioners and other poor citizens. With little explanation from the government on how these health vouchers work, many of the uninsured are unsure of what rights and privileges they hold in the deal. Legions of door-to-door salespersons were set loose on the country, sniffing out health vouchers and their poverty-stricken beneficiaries. Three major insurance companies, along with a sampling of smaller ones, are participating in the voucher scheme: GPI Holding, Aldagi and Irao. The first two have taken flak for their marketing efforts. President Saakashvili's brother, alleges Labor Party activist Giorgi Gugava, has invested in Irao. In an interview with the newspaper Alia, Gugava claims that state officials are doing their best to give Irao the upper hand by accusing the other industry leaders, particularly Aldagi, of taking advantage of poor Georgians. Aldagi bosses refuse to publicly wade into the fray, but leading ruling party members have denounced alleged cases of abuse. The insurance company, they say, has been wooing customers and their vouchers with initial payouts of GEL 5, or for food and medication. Parliamentary majority leader Davit Kirkitadze took the lead in promising to protect consumer rights in choosing an insurance company, pushing for an investigation into shady marketing tactics. Just how exploitative the company's salespeople are is open to question. There's nothing amiss in offering incentives to potential customers, but there is a legitimate concern that uninformed and poor consumers-already society's most vulnerable-could be getting bad deals. However, Gugava, the Labor Party member, suggests the ruling National Movement has orchestrated the whole debacle, and not just to help out well-connected brothers. They've whipped up a bogeyman from the insurance companies, he says, giving them an opportunity to sweep to the rescue with savior rhetoric. The health vouchers, characterized as gifts from the party, are a cynical-and state-financed-public relations push, he argues. But while smarmy PR campaigns are nothing new for the National Movement, Gugava is clutching at straws. Distributing health vouchers is, in theory, a critically helpful means for assisting those in desperate need. Improprieties in the implementation would be sadly unsurprising, but that wouldn't mean the idea is flawed. People need these,
and they need clear explanations of what to do with them. A public information
campaign and strong oversight should accompany insurance voucher distribution-a
seemingly obvious provision, but one which seems to have been ignored. |
Health
insurance vouchers shouldn't be PR tools