Dear Mr. Hanway,
As the CEO of CIGNA, if you or a member of your family were diagnosed with a brain tumor like Dawn Smith, none of you would have a problem getting the appropriate treatment at all, would you? At any cost and by any means necessary.
It is selfish,insensitive and greedy corporations like yours that need to look at a much bigger picture. When millions of Americans suffer from severe illnesses like Dawn's, or even minor illnesses for which you deny treatment, the entire economy suffers.
Each day, an increasing number of businesses are unable to provide health care for their employees because of the outrageous premiums you place on them. Each day, business who used to pay 100% or 80% or even 50% of their employees' health care premiums are announcing that they are forced to pay less because the bottom line is bottoming out. Eventually--probably sooner than later-- these business will have to opt out, leaving their employees to pay for their own insurance, which, of course, they won't be able to afford. As a result you will slowly see a devastating drop in customers.
Perhaps your PR and marketing team hasn't realized that people who are sick, can't work, or at the very least, cannot work productively. This basic tenent has a direct impact on business in America, forcing cutbacks in staff and service and eventual shutdowns, which, in turn, results in higher unemployment.
You won't give a damn until you start to see your own business going under and then you and your cronies will look around and ask yourselves "What happened?" How can you be so ignorant and clue-less that you can't see this devastating outcome creeping up on you.
Your profits are outrageous, unscrupulous,and shamelessly diabolic. If Dawn Smith dies because you and your executives "need" to maintain their lifestyles, may God have mercy on your soul, if you have one. There is no room in America, the so-called land of opportunity (for some) for the growing numbers of you who show no mercy for the poor, sick, and disabled, but will spend millions or billions to support congressional campaigns by lobbying members of congress to look the other way and support your special interests. It really is a for of bribery and extortion, isn't it?
I feel certain that karma will escort you off the planet in a most haunting way. And you can't take your ill-obtained billions with you. Re-think your business practices and marketing strategies Mr. Hanway and do something good for a change. Lower your rates and perhaps the world will beat a path to your door, allowing you to maintain your indecent profits in a more humane way.
I am a Christian but I am not a Bible thumper. I don't go the church regularly and I am not well versed in scripture but there is one passage I will never forget and one that you should heed: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.
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