One of the reasons we built this blog and community is to give our consumers, and people with opinions, and even our detractors, a place to talk about us and our concept of healthcare. The very first objection from just about everyone is "but it will just be a place for people to complain!" To which I respond: so what? We are not a company to bury our dirty laundry: if our customers have a complaint, I want to know about it, and I want them to have an easy way to tell us, and an easy way for us to respond. Hopefully Ignite becomes just such a place.
But in the meantime, you can actually check out what other real people have to say about us (not all of it good) by searching the blogosphere for "Lumenos" using one of these tools:
http://www.technorati.com
http://blogsearch.google.com
You will find:
- Doctors who strongly oppose our business model
- Customers who love us to death
- Lumenos employees who wrote about us on their personal blogs, and probably never thought anyone would find them
- Industry insiders talking about the hot wave in consumer-driven health
- People who are understandably baffled by how to use their health insurance, and are angry at everybody
- One of our clients who set up a blog so it's employees could talk about our benefit plan amongst themselves
Like I said, it's not always pretty, but it's awfully fun to read, and it makes clear just how confusing the American healthcare industry has become. I hope those people who found time and enery to post negatively can find this blog, and let us have it, so we can get on to fixing it for them.
Update:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/iraq/2006/03/hawijah_iraq_lt.html
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/4541207
This article by the USAToday.com blogger Kimberly Johnson, embedded with the 101st Airborne in Iraq, shows an interesting effect of what I describe above. The battalion commander reacted to a blog post referring to a rather, hm, colorful phrase inscribed by a soldier on a hand-grenade. The colonel understands the power of this medium:
The commander says he’s actually in favor of having journalists embedded with his battalion because it’s a way to tell his soldiers’ story. “There are risks associated with that,” of course. But, he added, “I’m going to turn you loose and hope for the best.”