Cigna Healthcare stock was in remission as its president, David Cordani, dropped by The Denver Post.
The stock was going down with the rest of the managed-care sector Thursday after a lesser player, Coventry Health Care Inc., slashed its latest earnings projections.
For its part, Cigna lost 7 percent of its value, closing at $36.94.
Medical costs keep rising at more than twice the rate of inflation, forcing price hikes at all the managed-care payers. With every hike, health insurance becomes more unaffordable. And the growing ranks of the uninsured are yet another drain on the system.
Some point to a bureaucratic and profiteering health-care system. But Cordani, who was in town to launch Cigna’s branding campaign, says the problem is us.
“Americans have more illnesses than any other developed nation,” he said. “We have twice the rate of cancer . . . heart disease . . . arthritis and muscular-skeletal issues.”
Too much lounging around, eating processed foods and enjoying the flat-screen American Dream.
“We live unhealthy lives,” he said. “We eat less healthy. We exercise less. We have adopted convenience lifestyles. . . . We have the highest rate of obesity in the world. And you can correlate obesity to diabetes and coronary disease.”
Cigna recently acquired the health-insurance business of Greenwood Village-based GreatWest Life & Annuity Inc. in a deal valued at $1.5 billion.
It now has nearly 4,000 Colorado employees and insures a half-million people in the state. So it chose Denver to launch its national campaign, “It’s time.”
The ads say, “It’s time to feel better”; “It’s time to start”; “It’s time for a change.” But what they are really saying is that it’s time to get our cans off the couch and do something besides slouch toward expensive catastrophic illnesses.
Cordani is fond of quoting a University of Michigan professor, D.W. Edington: “Just keep people from getting sicker.”
The American population is aging, growing obese and developing expensive ailments.
“If you stop where you are today and stabilize, the impact on the health-care system will be immense,” Cordani said. “If you are 25 pounds overweight, just don’t become 35 pounds overweight.”
Cordani, 42, is a lean 170 pounds, standing 6 feet tall. He grew up in the industrial city of Waterbury, Conn., the son of a police officer.
He saw his relatives toil at the copper and brass smelters.
“I know cancer very well,” he said. “It riddled my family. My grandparents, my cousins, my uncles. My mother-in-law just passed away from it. My father- in-law is recovering from cancer surgery right now.”
It’s painful. It’s expensive. It’s the direction the arrow of time points for all of us. But as Americans, we seem committed to going there en masse, putting an unprecedented strain on the system.
Cordani, raised on an Italian mother’s cooking, was 50 pounds overweight through college. He eventually took up triathlons.
“I want to have a long, unburdened life with my family,” he said.
Life expectancy for his generation is 79. For his son’s generation, it may be 77.
“It will be shorter than ours,” he said, “if we don’t turn it around.”
And a lot more expensive.
Al Lewis: alewis@
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to the columnist’s error, David Cordani’s name was misspelled.
