Published: July 25, 2009 10:37 pm         

TRIBUNE-STAR EDITORIAL: Casualties mounting in Union-Anthem conflict

Even if they settle, fallout will persist

If one moment represents the effect the contract dispute between Union Hospital Health Group and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has had on our community, it probably came last week at a Vigo County Public Library board meeting.

The library has suffered a terrible year with huge budget cuts that cost jobs and closed all three branches in Terre Haute. Throughout the ordeal, board members were sad but stoic and uncomplaining. Their public stance: You do what you have to do.

Which is what made so powerful the board’s threat the other night to abandon both the insurance provider and the hospital. In a pair each of “hard-ball” letters to Union and Anthem, library board president Nancy Dowell warned the two warring parties that the library was prepared to take its considerable business to another hospital and another health care coverage company.

“I think you ought to re-write it and make it worse,” board member James Brown said of Dowell’s letters, echoing the frustration of thousands of area residents.

Even if Anthem and Union agreed upon a contract today, they have much damage control to perform. For months their inability to come to terms has taken an increasing toll on some 10,000 patient-subscribers in Indiana and Illinois. As if the whole issue of adequate health care coverage isn’t tough enough these days, the Union-Anthem fight has sown extra fear and loathing.

Both sides have lobbed their share of tear gas at one another, with most of it settling on the Union and Anthem customers in the middle. Whatever happens after the July 31 deadline, those health care consumers will rightly feel they have been exploited, and they will resent it.

They and many of their employer co-subscribers will remember all the anxiety-provoking letters and calls they received from the hospital group and the insurer. About 1,000 seniors, especially, will remember being informed by letter that they had about two weeks to figure out some new kind of Anthem Medicare supplemental coverage or confine their non-emergency hospitalizations to facilities in Brazil or Sullivan.

Perhaps the most unfortunate casualty of the prolonged and ugly battle between the hospital and its largest private insurer is Union’s hometown, caretaker image; it has been tarnished, and public enthusiasm for the hospital’s $185-million expansion has been diminished.

Rising high on the Eighth Avenue skyline (and across now-closed Seventh Street), the state-of-the-art medical center is scheduled to open early next year. Will Anthem be at the ribbon cutting? Will any of the company’s thousands of subscribers and employer customers such as the Vigo County School Corp., the City of Terre Haute or the Tribune-Star? Or will everyone be in line at Terre Haute Regional Hospital, which has been an organized class act throughout the Union-Anthem conflict?

In any event, if Union’s executives are planning to feature a few public testimonials at the ceremony, they might want to give the library board a pass.