My health insurance company Anthem fell afoul of the Affordable Care Act by paying themselves $1.3 million more than the allowed 20% overhead. So they are required to issue a rebate to individual ratepayers like me, a whopping 0.1% of my yearly premium.

The accompanying letter is a masterpiece of passive-aggressive corporate communication. Check out my scan of the letter that shows up as page 2 of an invoice. All caps, monospace font, awkward formatting, it’s almost like they didn’t want us to read it! So I helped them out with this nicely formatted version. I typeset the letter for them but I didn’t correct the awkward grammar; such as inappropriate uses of commas, and the general awkward writing, such as extensive conjunctions.

Typography aside the real offense is Anthem chose to cut a bunch of tiny checks to their customers rather than just applying the money as a premium rebate. Maybe they’re hoping a significant fraction of people won’t bother to deposit the $2 checks. Or maybe the inconvenience is just in keeping with their general contempt for their customers.

politics
  2012-07-19 22:46 Z