Cross And Blue

With investment and other income rising, CareFirst Inc., the holding company for the Maryland and District of Columbia Blue Cross plans, yesterday posted a 30.5 percent increase in operating profit for the second quarter.The operating profit was $26.9 million for the quarter that ended June 30, up from the $21.7 million earned in the second quarter of 1997.The CareFirst plans posted a hefty increase in revenue of $985.6 million for the quarter, up 16.9 percent from $843.1 million in the second quarter last year.

TOWSON -- The county refinanced $75 million in bonds Wednesday with Salomon Smith Barney in a competitive bond sale, which is expected to save county taxpayers more than $3 million during the 14-year payback schedule.The county got a new 4.49 percent interest rate instead of the former rates, which ranged from 5.7 percent to 6.6 percent.Man charged in theft of Blue Cross computersOWINGS MILLSOWINGS MILLS -- A Carney man accused of illegally selling equipment stolen from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland Inc. has been charged with four counts of felony theft, Maryland State Police said yesterday.

CareFirst Inc., the parent of the Maryland and District of Columbia Blue Cross plans, reported essentially flat earnings yesterday of $18 million for the quarter that ended Sept. 30, down from $18.5 million in the corresponding quarter last year.The slight decline in profitability came despite record revenue as increases in medical costs offset top-line gains.Revenue for the quarter was $976.4 million, up 12.5 percent from $867.9 million in the third quarter of 1997. But while revenue was up $108 million, medical claims were up by $123 million.

An article in Thursday's editions of The Sun about a Baltimore Circuit Court jury's awarding $10.2 million to a Baltimore woman and her son incorrectly stated that part of the award was for punitive damages. Those damages were for pain and suffering.The Sun regrets the errors.A jury in Baltimore Circuit Court has awarded $10.2 million to a woman and her son in a medical malpractice case that stemmed from the boy's birth eight years ago, that left him mentally disabled.In the lawsuit, Deborah Ringgold of Baltimore accused Dr. Dario A. Ugarte and the Carefirst Health Maintenance Organization of negligence in the birth of her son May 25, 1989.

In Maryland, Haroon R. Ansari once told whopping lies on a resume that state officials never bothered to check and was named to a $62,000-a-year job as head of Crownsville Hospital Center.The would-be psychologist was declared a fraud, resigned in disgrace and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor last April, promising never to lie on a job application again.A week later, he sent his resume to officials with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan. Authorities said he told more whopping lies and got hired for over $80,000 a year, with his employer once again failing to conduct a background investigation.

A phony psychologist who used falsified resumes to land high-paying jobs got his foot in the door again yesterday -- but this time it was a jail cell.Haroon R. Ansari, 36, was sentenced to 10 days in the Anne Arundel County Detention Center for violating his Maryland probation by using a phony resume to get an $87,000-a-year job as an executive with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan."Perhaps a few days in the cooler will convince Mr. Ansari that we are serious when we talk about zero tolerance for health care fraud -- whatever form it might take," said Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr.Mr.

The state insurance commissioner told a House of Delegates committee yesterday that he wouldn't mind giving up regulatory control over the rates Blue Cross and Blue Shield pay doctors and other health care providers -- a change the Blues says it needs to compete with private, for-profit insurers.But providers, whose reimbursement rates were cut an average 15 percent by the Blues last year, said state oversight is still needed and should be extended to other companies' reimbursement levels as well.

Anne Arundel County teachers accepted yesterday a two-year agreement that will give them a new health plan option, but no cost-of-living raises.The agreement was reached nine months after negotiations began and 17 days after the previous contract expired."

The Ryland Group Inc. is expected to announce Monday that it has appointed William L. Jews to its 10-member board of directors.Mr. Jews, president and chief executive of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland Inc., would replace Ryland Chief Financial Officer Alan P. Hoblitzell Jr., who retired at the end of last year.Mr. Jews also is a director of NationsBank of Maryland, Crown Central Petroleum Corp. and Morgan State University.In addition, the 42-year-old executive chairs the Greater Baltimore Committee, a local business group.

Nikkei index falls to 34-month lowJapan's benchmark stock index plunged to a 34-month low this morning on concern that a government plan to help banks dispose of bad loans isn't sufficient to do the job, traders said.Worries about a stalled economic recovery and stagnant corporate profits are also weighing on the market, they said.By late morning, the Nikkei 225 was down about 300 points, or 2 percent, to its lowest level since August 1992.Large British cable firms to mergeThe biggest cable television operator in Britain, TeleWest Communications PLC, and the fifth-largest, SBC CableComms (UK)

Francis C. Ehart, a retired stationery company executive and former longtime Linthicum Heights resident, died Tuesday of a cerebral hemorrhage at the Hospice of the Chesapeake in Harwood. He was 93. Mr. Ehart was born in Baltimore and raised on Marshall Street. He attended city public schools until the eighth grade and later earned his General Educational Development diploma while attending night school. In 1931, Mr. Ehart began working as an office boy for D.N. Owens & Co. Inc., a Baltimore business forms company located on Calvert Street.

John M.T. Finney III, a retired Blue Cross and Blue Shield executive who had been active in Boy Scouts, died Sunday of pneumonia at the College Manor nursing home in Lutherville. The former longtime Roland Park resident was 85. Mr. Finney was born in Baltimore and raised on Circle Road in Ruxton. He was the son of Dr. John M.T. Finney Jr., a noted Baltimore surgeon who was a founder of Union Memorial Hospital. He was a 1942 graduate of McDonogh School and attended Princeton University.

Dr. Patricia Dubyoski spends time each day huddled in a hallway alcove at her Bel Air medical office, sorting through paperwork and stacks of patients' files. When she needs to make a notation about follow-up care, "I put a little sticky thing on here that says, `Repeat echocardiogram in spring 2007.' " That's about to change. Spurred by the prospect of a $100,000 payment from CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Dubyoski's six-doctor office is expanding its use of electronic medical records - a computer system that, among other functions, will generate electronic reminders to patients when they need to be retested.

Hume Opie Annan Jr., a retired vice president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland, died of cancer May 7 at Sacred Heart Hospital in Cumberland. He was 77 and a resident of Fort Ashby, W.Va., and formerly lived in Loch Raven Village. He was born in Tampa, Fla., and raised in Cumberland, and he worked his studies at Princeton University around merchant marine service in World War II. He graduated from the school in 1949 and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honors fraternity. After serving in the Army from 1950 to 1952, he moved to Baltimore and became vice president of corporate planning and research for Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

When a phalanx of lobbyists descended on Annapolis with the $1.3 billion proposal to sell Maryland's Blue Cross and Blue Shield to a California-based, for-profit corporation, Michael E. Busch was among the first lawmakers to raise a stink. Then a committee chairman, Busch decried the move as inconsistent with the mission of the state's largest nonprofit insurer. "I would encourage every citizen to contact their legislator on how they feel on this issue," he said in January 2002. Scores of citizens did, and the deal collapsed when it was revealed that the executives pushing for approval stood to gain lucrative bonuses.

DOVER, Del. - Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Delaware presented its state insurance commissioner yesterday a plan under which it would remain affiliated with CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield but would be able to divorce itself from the regional health insurer if it was unhappy with the results of Maryland's efforts to reform CareFirst. The reshaped relationship between the Delaware Blues and CareFirst gives the Delaware plan "control of our destiny in case things did not work out, while continuing to have the benefits of our successful affiliation," Max S. Bell Jr., board chairman of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Delaware (BCBSD)

Health insurance is a highly regulated industry, but state officials who oversee the industry have bumped up against a powerful entity they can't regulate - the national Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. In Maryland and North Carolina, regulators and legislators have been stymied at times in trying to deal with the local Blue Cross Blue Shield entity when the national association has threatened to pull its trademark and threaten the viability of the local insurer. "If there's a novel issue rising out of what happened in Maryland, it's the role of the association and the power that they have," said Steven B. Larsen, the former Maryland insurance commissioner whose scathing report halted CareFirst, the Blue Cross plan in Maryland, from converting to a for-profit company from nonprofit.

Richard E. Gillespie, a retired Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland executive and philanthropist, died of cancer Thursday at the Fairhaven retirement community in Sykesville. He was 87. Mr. Gillespie was born and raised in York, Pa., and after graduating from high school in 1933, moved to Baltimore, where he attended the Peabody Conservatory and the Johns Hopkins University. His college studies were interrupted by World War II. He enlisted in the Army, where he directed a jazz band that toured stateside military bases.

Robert Reed Davis, a financial planner who had worked for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland, died of pancreatic cancer yesterday at his Lutherville home. He was 56. Mr. Davis was born in Baltimore and raised in Rodgers Forge. He was a 1964 graduate of St. Paul's School, where he was a first team All-Maryland lacrosse player. While studying at Brown University in Providence, R.I., he continued playing lacrosse and was an All-American in the sport. After earning his bachelor's degree in 1968, he studied psychology at Loyola College.

IF YOU'RE not shocked, awed and fascinated by what's going on with CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, you're not paying attention. Blue Cross bosses in Owings Mills have been quarreling with Blue Cross bosses in Chicago. A pro-business, anti-regulation Republican governor signed a bill that came close to making CareFirst, Maryland's biggest health insurer, a state agency. Until late last week it looked like CareFirst might lose its Blue Cross and Blue Shield logos. Some 3.2 million subscribers in Maryland, Delaware and Washington were in danger of losing away-from-home coverage.