Cigna is one of the largest health insurance corporations in the US.
Cigna’s profits in 2020 increased to $8.5bn from $5.1bn in 2019.
David Cordani, the CEO of Cigna, received nearly $79m in compensation in 2020, a raise of $13.4m from the previous year.
In March 2021, Cigna announced plans to increase expenditures on stock buybacks to $8bn over the next four years.
Its workers started an online petition demanding Cigna improve working conditions, including lifting a pay raise freeze, stopping constant harassment of workers to meet production metrics.
“Customer management requires us to handle phone calls within a specific amount of time,” said a call representative at Cigna in the midwest, explained. “The numbers are hardcore. They’re constantly on you about them and to me, that doesn’t really meet the customers’ needs. The phone call metrics could go down if customer service advocates were trained better and we had better resources.”
They often receive phone calls from customers who have called repeatedly without any resolution to their problem, and that they are constantly being monitored by apps and prompted to move on to the next call.
“I always get pressured on every end. There were days that I would almost be in tears before I would even log in for work, I just mentally, emotionally and physically cannot handle that anymore,” the representative added. “There were times when I was the sixth customer service advocate that they’ve talked to in the last couple of weeks, and nothing is getting resolved. Nothing. This is a customer who has called multiple times and they’re upset. This is their health insurance. This is something that’s important. And when you can’t resolve it for either lack of training or lack of time because you’re having to meet metrics, that gets old.”
A whole new set of issues arose once the Covid-19 pandemic hit and workers were allowed to work from home.
Paid time off was taken from workers for any technical issues they experienced while working remotely, and staff handled a huge volume of calls from customers irritated about the delays in processing Covid-19 testing reimbursement claims.
“The process was unbelievable. It could have been six months before reimbursement and it was going to be in a multitude of checks. We’re given 15 minutes to make outbound phone calls to doctor offices, provider offices, and they get taken away because of the call volume metrics,” the worker said. “The numbers are constantly driven down your throat. Email, after email, after email – check your numbers, make sure you hit your numbers and everything. Our manager would post our numbers daily so everybody on your team knows whether or not you’re meeting your metrics.”
“Burnout is very high and these jobs, the metrics they have to meet in many cases are impossible to meet, particularly if they’re talking to a health plan enrollee who has a complicated case. But they’re on the clock and there’s an expectation they will handle a certain number of calls in a day,” said Wendell Potter, who worked at Cigna from 1993 until he retired in 2008 as vice president of corporate communications and became a whistleblower on the industry.
Potter added: “You have to deal with people who are in a difficult spot and in many cases angry, trying to figure out their health plan, benefits and why something was denied or why they had to get prior authorization for something. In my view, it’s one of the most stressful jobs in a health insurance company.”
“After a year of Covid, and all of us making adjustments for Covid and everything. They were like, ‘Well, sorry, you’re not getting a raise, you know, you’re just out of luck this year,’” one worker said.
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