This is a transcript of a news article that appeared on BBC 10 pm news on November 6th 2006 about Atos’s US sister company Unum. For some reason it has been removed from the BBC’s web site and cannot be found anywhere else on the Internet.
Hew Edwards, anchor: A multinational insurance company accused of racketeering and cheating thousands of Americans out of welfare benefits, is giving advice to the British government on welfare reform. A BBC investigation has found that executives from Unum have held meetings with seniorWhitehall officials to discuss changes to the benefit system. Mark Daly has this exclusive report:
Mark Daly, presenter: US-based multi-national insurance giant, Unum, has shown a keen interest inUK welfare reform since the mid 1990s. This is Unum’s HQ inPortland inMaine. Unum are the world’s largest disability insurers, with more than 25 million customers in theUS alone. But in 2002, a series of whistle blowers came forward with damning allegations. Linda Nee was a claims handler for UnumProvident, as it was called then.
Linda Nee: I was often placed in the position by a consultant, who was my supervisor, of denying a claim. Of telling me to deny a claim, or having a manager tell me to remove documentation from a claim so that an attorney would not have an opportunity to see it.
Mark Daly, presenter: It was alleged that UnumProvident cheats tens of thousands of disabled Americans out of their rightful benefit claims. Many of them came fromCalifornia. Joan Hangarter had her own business before falling ill.
Joan Hangarter: An impartial, unanimous jury of 12 people found that Unum had wrongfully terminated my benefits. They had lied, they had cheated, they had misrepresented the facts.
Mark Daly, presenter: She was awarded $7.5million in damages but allegations of racketeering persisted. Then, in 2005, insurance commissioner John Garamendi declared: “UnumProvident is an outlaw company. It is a company that for years has operated in an illegal fashion.” In a unique settlement signed by all 50 States, it was fined $23million, ordered to reopen 300,000 denied claims at a cost of half a billion dollars. (Denied calims still not reinvestigated as of Oct 2010. MS)
Peter Dewis, Unum Customer Services: I think the important thing to recognise is that those issues that were found in relation to theUS claims management practices now belong to history. They were critically reviewed when the regulatory findings came out, a number of very important changes have been made. In theUK we reviewed all of our claims management practices and found ourselves not to be wanting in relation to anything that theUS regulators were saying.
Mark Daly, presenter: But, there are still dozens of bad faith cases and allegations outstanding against the company on both sides of theAtlantic. Despite all of this Unum had senior executives sitting on key government working groups last year, and has provided detailed memorandum on transforming the benefits system. The government also awarded grants worth £300,000 to Unum’s research centre in Cardiff.
Ian Gibson MP: I think the government should have them in front of them in an open scrutiny process in Parliament, and we should ask them what their game is. Why it happened in the States first, could not happen here if they have still got the same philosophy. There is some indication now that they haven’t changed that much. The leopard hasn’t changed its spots.
Mark Daly, presenter: The BBC has discovered internal documents revealing that Unum believes it is driving Government policy. The Department for Work and Pensions refused to comment on Unum’s past. A spokesman said: “Throughout the process of developing our policies…. Ministers and officials have met and spoken to hundreds of organisations and individuals like Unum to find out what works.” As Unum attempt to leave its chequered past behind, the debate overUK welfare reform will rage on.
Mark Daly – BBC News
NB: This transcript was removed from the BBC website and was recently provided by a national disability charity. MS
With thanks to Anne Gardner author of Disability Denial Factories Working Well in the UK For providing Black Triangle with this transcript.
19 Responses
P – Within minutes of posting this we have 3 visitors from the states online viewing this article who I am as convinced as I can be from the evidence their IP addresses produce are Unum – BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING CLOSELY !
6 now, 5 from Seattle WA and 1 from Redmond WA. F*** You.
I am advised that both UNUM and Atos make 50 hits per day on my website… I wonder why 🙂
I think the expression is actually ‘Fuck You. And the horse you rode in on!’. I’ve no idea what it means but I do like it lo.l
Thanks for this, been looking for it since I heard about that piece.
P – Please people, spread and share this transcript wherever you can, Unum have tried to wipe all references to it from the internet and the more place/web sites it is the harder it will be for them to do it again.
Have posted it in full on my blog 🙂
It seems to me that those of us who decide to look into Atos and WCA go through the same stages of discovery. It’s like being a detective isn’t it? You start to get glimpses of this other company, Unum, which you would think has nothing to do with it, and then omg! it just develops into what looks like a scandal to me. That this private company from the U.S is dictating *our* welfare policy, especially at a time when decent working people in America were being subjected to their fraudulent practices.
And the academics involved, Mansel and Waddell providing the ‘scholarly’ backup whilst being funded by them. The ‘scholarly’ works amounting to nothing more than a conspiracy to deny illness and enforce an Orwellian mind control notion that “Work Is Good For You”. full stop. One which the government seeks to make sure permeates all aspects of the DWP and the public mind. I find myself wondering what kind of men these are who put their own material gain over other people’s suffering. If only there was an investigative journalist who had the will and muscle to expose this.
To sum it up: Unum have worked on the UK government to deny workers entitlement to support when they become ill/disabled, now they are set to launch a huge marketing campaign to get people to take up private health insurance. Nicely played Unum! Sad thing is part of their marketing efforts is a ‘website partnership’ with the Guardian, so no chance of support from them. I wonder if that was deliberate?
I think a lot of us are going to be throwing things at our TVs when this gets going.
http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/cover/news/2083156/unum-unveils-consumer-campaign
F*cking parasites feeding off the fear that they themselves instigated. How is this not gross abuse of our parliamentary system for private gain? Surely there’s something that can be done. Its blatant!
I said private health insurance, but its not of course, its this ‘Income Protection’ racket they’ve devised.
A private form of our National Insurance, which due to their efforst is being rendered redundant. Sorry I’ve gone on so much about this everybody :/
I’ve gone on rather too much on here, having also spent the whole morning trawling the net for Unum related stuff. I knew I’d strayed too far into conspiracy-theory-land when a search threw up the saying ‘E Pluribus Unum’, an interpretation of which someone gave as “We’re all in it together”. I’m going to stop now before I end up getting the Bible down and scanning it for references to them :p
We all need to work together on this. (My own learning difficulties impact on my short term memory and ability to plan and organise.) What I have in mind is a package of facts about UNUM/Atos to take to my MP and councillors. The package should briefly mention the distress these reforms are creating at the beginning. It should mostly concentrate on politics for hire for private companies profit, because that’s how we got here. We need to be our own journalists to get this right. Just the facts.
What I want to do with the package is present it to my MP in a meeting. I want to ask which side of the scandal he wants to be on and ask him to write back.
Gill – You’ve summed it up better than I ever have.
I’ve written a short briefing on this whole disgraceful saga. If anyone would like it just pm me with your email address and I’ll send it to you.
Thanks Alec 🙂 I think you’re right about us all working together. And I think the collective efforts are really beginning to amount to something. Imagine how we would have been before the internet, all isolated and feeling like we were the only ones singled out for this treatment, dependent only on whatever could be raised through the mainstream media or unknowledgeable MPs. How would that have been?
Corruption at its worst, and all in the name of the big bad Dollar and the pound. Whatever will they think of next.