[John_W]

Some large companies without a union will do anything they want without regard to their employees. My wife worked at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Maryland from 1969 until 1993. One day they called her into the office and said, you can resign now and we'll give you three months pay or if you go back to your desk, we'll fire you and you will get nothing. Of course she resigned, they replaced her with a temp at $15 an hour with no benefits. She applied for unemployment, and even though she had quit, she received full benefits because they said, they know what Blue Cross does to their employees.

She started as a file clerk and worked her way up to an underwriter, she had great healthcare with zero deductible, six weeks vacation a year but the pay wasn't great, it was in the low $30's. Two years before the new president of the company, William Jews who was paid $5 million a year salary. Decided he liked the suburb of Owings Mills better than Towson, so he bought a million dollar house in Owings Mills. He sold the company's headquarters, a small high-rise building in Towson to Baltimore County for $7 million and they moved their police headquarters into the building.

William Jews, the man who used Blue Cross of Maryland as his own cash cow!!



The Towson Blue Cross building that Jews determined was no longer suitable and sold for $7 million, the county moved their police headquarters into the building.



William Jews had the company build two new high-rise buildings on the edge of Owings Mills Mall for several million more and the company moved there.



The company got such a bad reputation by denying claims, raising premiums. I had my coverage at $200 a month, they attempted to raise it to $250 a month for several years and causing me to raise my deductible every year, until it got to $3,000 deductible and then I finally dropped them. My wife said they many security guards at the new buildings because so many irate customers attempted to do harm to the company. In the end, she was glad she no longer had to work there.

Jews attempted to sell the company in 2001 for $1.3 billion which would of generated him a $39 million bonus. It was eventually blocked and the state assembly stepped in and replaced most of the company's board. Instead Jews gave himself a $9 million bonus in 2002. Jews finally left Blue Cross in 2006 and received a golden parachute of $18 million dollars.