Insurance: Company's gift raises questions

Re: “Lost artifact to get home on Tacoma waterfront,” (TNT, 6/29).

While $2.93 million is certainly a generous gift for which the citizens of Tacoma should be grateful, the fact that Regence BlueShield’s parent has so much profit that it can give away such sums raises serious questions about the legitimacy of health insurer assertions that rate increases are necessary.

A few days after the announcement of the gift, I received a letter from Regence informing me that the company would no longer offer individual health plans to Pierce County residents in 2018. Presumably such decisions are made because the contracts are not profitable.

At the gala, was it disingenuous of Cambria President Mark Ganz to fail to mention that Regence was abandoning the individual insurance market in Tacoma, where it got its start 100 years ago?

Was the gift to assuage the company’s collective guilt about making it harder (if not impossible) for the self-employed to obtain health insurance contracts offering a large in-network complement of physicians? In 2017, Regence was the only game in town for such contracts.

This story was originally published July 23, 2017 at 5:33 PM with the headline "Insurance: Company's gift raises questions."