New Kaiser Thrive ad parody and why we exist

Among the most frequently asked questions we receive are “Who are you?” and “What are your goals?” Kaiser Permanente Thrive Exposed was started in 2004 as an anti-brand campaign, to counter KP’s deceptive attempt to rehabilitate its reputation with $40 million+ per year in member money, in the form of Thrive. We didn’t know anyone who was thriving at Kaiser, and that certainly hadn’t been our own experience.

The site is primarily run by a former Kaiser member, although we have had various people helping us over the years and we are always looking for volunteers. Are we disgruntled? Not anymore, but Kaiser and our critics like to throw that accusation around as a slur to discredit our efforts. The word has a literal meaning and we are just not inclined to take it as an insult. The question Kaiser should be asking itself is why it turns out so many disgruntled folks — patients and employees alike. In our case we were only driven to activism after giving them ample opportunity to address our complaints in good faith, and running up against the patented “Kaiser Treatment” (lie, block and deny) at every turn. No one expects it until it happens to them.

We had some web and marketing experience and so it was natural that we would put those skills to use. The original goal was to embarrass Kaiser, so they might think twice before doing the same things to others. They would never admit it but we did accomplish that objective when we registered this domain name and had the top spot on Google for the term “Kaiser Thrive” before the Thrive campaign even began. Then a few newspapers covered us on Kaiser’s home turf of Northern California. If you think that wasn’t a humiliating blow then you are underestimating how much KP’s brand image experts were patting themselves on the back for their accomplishments at the time.

I know you are thinking well surely this inspired Kaiser to reach out and address your issues, of which they were fully aware, but that is not at all what happened. They fought our complaints even more vigorously, including every dirty trick we have ever mentioned elsewhere on this site. On a professional level, rather than depriving us of the source of our material by addressing the corruption we were reporting — which would have been the right thing to do — they responded instead with something called Black Hat SEO, a form of dirty trickery in search engine optimization, hoping to get us banned from Google. They really didn’t want anyone to find us because they know everything we have posted here is true, and it looks especially bad when it’s all collected in one place. Still we persisted, and we became quite popular with the disgruntled crowd. That is how we learned that we are not special. Every Kaiser member or employee with a grievance is dealt with exactly the same way. We have literally never met one person who has been treated fairly in a dispute with KP.

The difficulty we had finding health insurance after Kaiser is what led us to the realization that health care is broken in this country, and that KP is really just a symptom of the larger disease. That is why we kept the site up while we were inactive, and a contributor to why we chose to come back now after a long break. Health care reform will be a big topic of interest in the coming years and Kaiser is always trying to insert its model into the conversation. People need to know that the Kaiser Permanente portrayed in its slick Thrive ads bears no resemblance to the truth.

So that is basically our backstory, and we do plan to answer more frequently asked questions as we go along.

And now without further ado, our latest Kaiser Thrive Ad Parody. Feel free to download and share:

Click the image to see the rest of our Kaiser Thrive ad parodies.