What, you might ask yourself, would cause a health insurance company coming off a quarter where it had multi-billion dollar profits to slam individual policyholders with rate increases up to 39%?

Well, let’s see. 

Maybe the insurer is headquartered on Mars and is unaware that a debate to reform the health care system has been raging in the United States for the past year.  And maybe this insurer was unaware that this debate has witnessed health insurers taking more than their share of abuse.

Or maybe the insurer is headquartered in the U.S. but is in need of a gigantic corporate hearing aid to assist in overcoming a massive condition of tone deafness.

Or maybe the insurer is just plain arrogant and doesn’t give a hoot about how this plays out in the larger world.

OK, maybe it’s none of these.  Maybe there were good reasons for the move and let’s concede them all.  So, concede the point that those billions in profit were largely a one-shot deal arising from a sale of a business.

And concede that the state’s regulations and the recession were causing the insurer to lose money on its individual business.  And concede that medical costs are skyrocketing, leaving premiums breathless to catch up in many cases.

Even with all those valid reasons, I still have to ask what the impulse is that causes one to offer up oneself as a piñata.  For surely, the company, no matter how tone deaf, had to have had some inkling of the uproar its pricing actions would cause.

After experiencing a year of hearing insurers railed at for unrestrained increases in premiums that are crushing businesses and consumers, how on earth do you go ahead and up the ante for some customers by 39%?

Was the company really clueless enough to expect that politicians would pass up the opportunity to relaunch a crusade that was showing signs of flagging?  Do lions pass up a nice big chunk of red meat when it’s thrown their way?

So, here’s my advice to the CEO of the company.  Don’t blame your actuaries, who I’m sure had very good reasons for justifying these increases.  Do blame your PR people—they’re paid to know better and they let you down grievously.   

And do take some of the blame yourself.  You could have had enough courage to tell your shareholders that this was just not the time to become a poster child for the excesses of the health insurance business.

I certainly hope the rest of the business will take note of what happened here.  But it does make you wonder whether tone deafness has become so persistent a condition that insurers have stopped listening.

It’s hard to believe that not only are we drawing close to the end of another year, but also closing in on the end of the first decade of the Third Millennium. 

(I already expect to hear from pedants and calendar officials informing me that in strict terms a decade goes from a year beginning with the number one, not zero.  Then I expect to hear from some people telling me that zero is not a number.  But most of you will know what I mean, and the others will just have to deal with it.)

(By the way, these same folks are very likely the ones who are still preoccupied with what to call the decade now about to end.  My own suggestion (considering the tenor of most of those 10 years) would be the Naughties.)

In any case (and to get back to life outside the parentheses) it’s been quite a year, hasn’t it?  

For many people it will be the equivalent of Queen Elizabeth II’s annus horribilis, 1992, and not because two of their sons’ marriages went bust and one of their castles caught on fire, to cite some of the royal disasters of that year that caused Her Majesty so much distress.

Rather many will remember 2009 as a horrible year because of more mundane reasons. They lost their job and couldn’t find another one.  Or their house (castle) went into foreclosure.  Or their retirement funds, once so safely (or so it seemed) parked in a 401(k) had managed to recoup only a small percentage of the 40% or 50% they had lost when the market went into free fall. Or because they were in sales (including insurance products, of course) and every day was more of an uphill climb than it usually is due to the fact that consumers all over the place were holding on to (not to mention squeezing hard) their depleted shekels.

And on that subject, the first six months of 2009 will be (bitterly) remembered as the time when sales of insurance products saw their steepest decline in nearly 70 years, according to LIMRA International.

Things may have started to pick up in a couple of lines, however.  So, in a time when looking for good news is the equivalent of grasping for straws, then the uptick in whole life sales (which account for a thin sliver of the market) is something worth celebrating.

We could also, I suppose, take cheer from the fact that economists are declaring that the recession officially over.  But the response of many non-economists to that claim is: Really?

The danger in trumpeting the macro view in something like this is that it stretches the disconnect between what people feel in the own lives and what they hear from those who see the “big picture” or who have a stake in pushing the rose-colored view of things that the macro view encourages.  (President Obama, take note.)

Needless to say, the widespread pain has made sales of insurance products ever so much more difficult.  The ‘intangible’ thing combined with the depletion of discretionary income has taken a toll on producers and companies alike.

All of which makes it imperative for both producers and companies to keep plugging away and using this time of trouble to reinforce the message of the security that insurance products provide.  Even if sales of those products come later.  

The reality is that these tough times will pass, although not as quickly as we would surely like.  But if producers and companies don’t stay on message now, they will have to compete with a myriad of consumer preoccupations later on (like looking for the best HDTV).

So many consumers are still very scared and want to hear about security. And that’s whether they can pay for it now or not.

As if Goldman Sachs did not already have enough image problems as the biggest pig at the Wall Street trough, it is now the most serious contender for the 2009 Marie Antoinette Award, which recognizes singular achievements in out-of-touch condescension.

Goldman has made no secret of the fact that it has set aside some $16.7 billion to be paid out to its employees as bonuses for the year 2009.  Now, this is a pretty big pile of money to have amassed just one year after coming close to a meltdown and accepting government (i.e., taxpayer) funds.   In fact, it’s more than just pretty big, it’s obscene.

It’s big enough and obscene enough to make ordinary people who are struggling to find jobs, pay the bills, keep the house out of foreclosure, etc. want to do things to Goldman that usually only happen in chainsaw movies.  After all, these people figure, we pulled their butts out of the fire with taxpayer money and now they’re rubbing our noses in these outlandish bonuses only a year later.

These violent urges are compounded by the knowledge that Goldman’s excesses are part of what brought about the severe unemployment situation, the cratering housing market and the all but invisible credit market.

This rage is strong enough that it apparently has reached the ivory towers of the executive suites of Wall Street and caused some (minor) tremors.  What if the politicians who up to now have been in our pockets grab hold of this rage and use it to start fencing us in?  Or the more likely scenario: What if this rage becomes so strong that these politicians have no choice but to grab hold of it, even if they don’t want to leave our pockets?

In the face of this, Goldman’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein apologized, sort of.  Just recently he said, “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret.  We apologize.”

But as we all know, words are cheap.  So Goldman decided to put some of its money where its mouth is.  It announced that it would be taking $500 million of that $16.7 billion and using it to support some 10,000 small businesses.  That is, it would take $100 million a year for 5 years to finance that support.

Do the calculation and you come up with 3% of the bonus pool.  I’m sure Goldman is hoping that this pittance will satisfy the rabble and calm them down. 

However, for a company that has no trouble whatsoever putting two and two together, it is likely that this gesture will prove to be a rather large miscalculation.  It’s hard to think of any act in the last few years that smacks more of “Let them eat cake” condescension.

And so, my friends, it is for these crumbs that Goldman is crowned the winner of the 2009 Marie Antoinette Award.  

May Goldman’s reputation for insufferable condescension live as long as the award’s namesake.  And may that reputation start to have a corrosive effect on the only place for which Goldman has any real feeling—its bottom line.