Leaked BlueCross Internal Memo Addresses SiCKO

An internal memo addressing the movie “SiCKO,” leaked to Michael Moore by a Capital BlueCross employee, is making the rounds on the Internet today. After its original posting on Moore’s site, it moved to Crooks and Liars, and eventually to Boing Boing.

Crooks and Liars says the memo shows that “SiCKO has Blue Cross scrambling.” Boing Boing sums up the memo as an attempt to “stop the bleeding,” paraphrasing Barclay Fitzpatrick’s part of the memo thus: “people are fat and lazy, and that makes it hard to run an HMO. Michael Moore was mean to us. He should be nicer. Some people don’t hate HMOs.”

Despite what people may want to believe, the memo doesn’t appear to be anything as drastic as what is suggested by the above two postings. Blue Cross, and many others, took a PR hit thanks to this movie, and now they are addressing it as anyone would. Simple as that. And although Moore claims that the memo is an attempt at “discounting the film,” it surely doesn’t seem that way to me. In fact, one line of the memo specifically states “the most successful strategy will not be in attacking the movie for its weaknesses or misperceptions.” The memo basically lays out information that can be used by employees and others in response to questions directed towards them arising from the movie.

But no matter how you view it, it’s great to see healthcare and the desire to change it rising in popularity across the web. Maybe leaks and responses like these will make insurers think twice about how they conduct business.

You can download the memo (in PDF format) here.