CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield: Sorry, no credit. Don't ask.

Picture this: A late summer Saturday.  A farmers’ market.  And the most pristine heirloom tomato you’ve ever spied—perhaps a plump Cherokee Purple or a juicy Mortgage Lifter—calling out to you from the grower’s table.  Reaching into your pocket for some walking-around money, you quickly realize that the only way that delicious cultivar is coming home with you is on the back-end of a plastic transaction.

If you happened to be at one of ten farmers’ markets operated by the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont that now accept debit cards and electronic benefit transfers, the goddess Ceres would be smiling down on your contemptible lack of legal tender.

Or imagine this: Just past midnight.  Interstate 95 somewhere between Fayetteville, SC and Savannah, GA.  The craving manifests itself in a single word: McNuggets.  Four of them, nestled in their cardboard container, attractively priced at just a dollar.  Delectable.  But all your cash was exhausted hours ago on the New Jersey Turnpike.  Relax.  Swipe your card.  $1.06.  No need to sign your name.  You’re back on the highway with edible gold as your co-pilot.

Monetary transactions between consumers and local farmers or International fast-food sellers have historically been sites of cash transactions.  Who wants to pay interest charges on a Filet-o-Fish?  But in the 21^st century, consumers value the efficiency of electronic payment methods, even for gastronomic impulse purchases.  It seems logical that for higher priced, recurring, and invariable payments, buyers and sellers might champion electronic payment methods, but for a $4 bag of Kettle Korn at a community market?

Enter CareFirst, Inc., the not-for-profit, non-stock, parent company of CareFirst of Maryland, Inc. and Group Hospitalization and Medical Services, Inc. which, according to its website:

Is the largest health care insurer in the Mid-Atlantic region, serving nearly 3.1 million members;

Has more than 5,400 employees in District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, Northern Virginia and West Virginia;

Has more than 80 percent of all of the Maryland/D.C./Northern Virginia region’s health care providers participating in one or more of its provider networks.

In other words, CareFirst isn’t a lemondade stand.

Data shows that more than 1.5 million people are members of self-insured plans in the State of Maryland; 44 percent of those are issued by CareFirst.  At the start of 2008, CareFirst had a combined self-insured membership of almost 900,000 DC, Virginia, and Maryland residents.  But none of those self-insured members can pay their monthly premiums online with a credit or debit card.

Welcome to the dark ages.

Despite the data from a 2002 Federal Reserve report suggesting that the use of paper checks is still prevalent in the U.S. (although the data also includes checks paid by depository institutions, U.S. Treasury checks, and postal money orders), the only people I regularly encounter writing personal checks for purchases over $100 are renters and the octogenarians in front of me at the supermarket who singlehandedly, or en masse, render the term “Express Lane” meaningless.

For a large company like CareFirst whose customers remit the same amount of money to month after month, year after year, the “Sorry, no credit” policy is not only archaic, it sets into motion the machinery of delinquent receivables.  Stamps and envelopes cost money.  Writing out “One hundred eighty three and 00/100” takes time.  And the USPS is less than punctual.

Perhaps CareFirst should think about catching up with McDonald’s when in comes to getting paid.  But as it stands now, all those Big Macs bought electronically will be catching up to its members’ arteries long before the insurance company ever sees the light.