“It’s not easy being gay,” said Mary Jo Hudson, director of the Ohio Department of Insurance. She wasn’t referring to political opposition and other obstacles, but the plight of same-sex couples who are trying to get and keep health insurance. Many employers and insurance companies require proof of a domestic partnership before you can qualify for benefits. One of the most common documents is an affidavit signed by both partners, explaining the details of the relationship. For more information on what needs to be included in an affidavit, the Web site insure.com offers a check list.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/health/09patient.html?_r=1&ref=health

I’m unsure of the number of employess. It may be “small” in terms of employees, but it Insure.com has a large web footprint. They’ve been heraleded by Forbes magazine and others as one of the “best of the web” insurance sites.

I’m also not sure, but I think they are owned by bestquotes.com.

The above cut and past letter to you from Mr. Brand from June 2, 2008 seems like it was written by two different people.

The first 4 paragraphs seemed perfectly professional. The sort of thing you might expect in response from an insurance company. Although it is from the CEO, and that seems strange, unless this is a very small outfit.

The last two paragraphs are so angry, and have such a different tone, that they don’t even seem related to the first part of the letter.

It must be a fairly small company whose leaders don’t have much PR sense. You just wouldn’t get this sort of vitriol from a larger, more professional organization with an established PR department.

Sadly, this article – which was updated Jun. 3, 2004 – is woefully outdated and inaccurate. For example, some of the statements within include:

No state currently recognizes same-sex marriages.

Obviously that is no longer true

Even as employers are increasingly looking to offer domestic partner benefits, health insurers are resisting selling plans that include such coverage. They fear that an employees gay partner might contract AIDS, an exorbitantly expensive disease to treat. No individual health insurers sell policies with domestic partner benefits.

I don’t know about all states, but since 01/01/05, in California all insurance providers were required by law to treat Domestic Partners identically to spouses. New Jersey also requires insurers to provide domestic partnership coverage.

Although the article is inaccurate, it is the sort of information that a site like insure.com should provide.

Sadly, much more effort has been expended in propogating false and defamatory claims that can be used by anti-gay activists than in updating an article that could provide true and useful information valuable to the company’s potential gay customers.

Our readers may wish to know that we had no interest in auditing Mr. Blands records or in providing ad-hoc editorials. Frankly, I’ve no idea where he came up with that. Nor had we branded him or his company as homophobic.

Dear Mr. Kincaid,
I have already asked our editororial personnel to re-check our facts on the NOvember 15, 2007 article in question.

It will take us several days to complete our fact-checking on this article, which we are happy to do and we thank you for taking the time and effort to write us citing your concerns.
We’re currently hosting about 3,000 articles in total and we are always ready and willing to recheck our facts when any reader states that they have found a factual error. We will thoroughly recheck our sources on these articles and we thank you again for taking the time and effort to write.

Insure.com has no corporate political agenda on this or any other political issue, but is interested in publishing accurate insurance-oriented information that might be of interest to consumers.

However, you clearly have more than a one-article accuracy concern on your mind today. I didn’t mention this in my earlier note to you today in the spirit of openness and cooperation, but your 1 minute claim that my 24 year-old firm is “homophobic” based upon your reading of one article or writer Joe White has published anything that is “fraudulent” or that we are otherwise now in need of your services to audit our hiring or marketing policies is going to fall on deaf ears here, especially given that you’ve decided you already know everything you need to know about us and that your two communications to us today both inflammatory, ill-researched, overly-emotional, highly-biased and perjorative claims that could be misleading and damaging to my firm’s sterling reputation.

You know nothing about us and we are not in need of any of your audit services or ad hoc editorials at the present time. You’ve read one of our 3,000 articles, didn’t like it and have then made all sorts of aggrandized assumptions and conclusions about us.

Sincerely,
Bob Bland, CEO

In Canada we take the publishing of lies attacking a minority very seriously. Though I expect a response from the Provincial Human Right Commission, our current Prime Minister (What’s 12″ and hangs between George Bush’s legs? Stephen Harper’s tie.) is so spineless, that I don’t imagine much will happen on the Federal side.

I would if I lived in a state that actually had anti-discrimination laws, and Bland is a registered agent doing business in CA

Wow, very impressive work, guys! I am wholly amazed at this CEO’s responses. Glad that you guys are on his ass.

Great work,

Joe