Unhappily Anthemized

The Anthem Blue Cross announcement (BDN, Aug. 23) of yet another gargantuan rate increase (31.7 percent) to its beleaguered individual insurance plan strikes terror into the hearts of those of us who are trying to hold on to a fragment of health insurance coverage.

This should also strike terror into the heart of the Maine Bureau of Insurance, which appears to rubber stamp this reckless trend of a “potato famine approach” to health insurance (put them on a boat to somewhere else), but alas, this seems to have no impact on this state’s refusal to stop this outrage.

My husband and I have a $15,000 deductible, individual insurance plan from Anthem and we have seen this increase from $76.46 a month in 1998 to the proposed increase of $201.68 a month. This current obscene trend will continue until Maine’s last remaining insurer of the individual drives all of its holders to the multitudes of the “silently uninsured.”

This swelling of the ranks of the silently uninsured must stop now and this state must start its first steps toward requiring mandatory health insurance for all residents, so that we are spreading this right to basic health care to all of its citizens. Only insuring the chronically ill residents with astronomical costs is a total failure.

What more will it take for us to act? As Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately!” An update on this sentiment must be, “We must all pay together, or most assuredly, we will all pay through the nose separately!”

Carol B. Fisher

Brewer