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[Note: This material is copyright by the Des Moines Register, and is reproduced here as a matter of "fair use" for non-commercial, educational purposes only. Any other use may require the prior approval of the Des Moines Register.]

Four current or former regents have served on Wellmark's board of directors, faculty members told a Register reporter.

"I don't think it's wise to have such great representation of the insurance industry on the board," history professor Katherine Tachau was quoted as saying in a Nov. 29 article.

Actually, it's one current and three former regents, and one of them, Marvin Pomerantz, didn't go on the Wellmark board until two years after he'd left the regents' board.

But who's counting?

It sounds more like a conspiracy when it is said the other way.

That's what this war of words really is about: images and spinning a story. Fairness and logic are irrelevant.

Nobody explains the purpose of the conspiracy. Presumably, it's bigger profits for the insurance company, although as a mutual, any profits flow back to the policyholders who own the company.

Again, that's not relevant.

What is relevant is that Wellmark is an easy target for the academics in Iowa City because:

- It is an insurance company, and everybody hates insurance companies.

- It is a health care insurance company, which we know is even worse.

The immediate issue, as far as the academics are concerned, is the U of I's crown jewel, its hospital system, which is regarded as one of the nation's premier teaching hospitals.

"The interests of health insurance companies and academic hospitals do not always coincide," Tachau said.

That statement is correct, but I would argue that anyone who thinks Wellmark controls the regents is delusional.

Only one of the nine members of the board of regents, Teresa Wahlert, is a member of the Wellmark board.

Based on that logic, you can make a stronger case that it's actually the other way around: that the U of I hospital controls Wellmark and has for years.

John W. Colloton, who was chief executive of the U of I hospitals for 22 years before he retired in 2001 to the position of director emeritus of the hospitals, has served on the Wellmark board since 1974. In fact, the board room where Wellmark directors meet in Des Moines is named the John W. Colloton Board Room.

Another director on the eight-member Wellmark board is Dr. Kenton Moss of Algona, who received his medical degree in 1978 from the U of I. Pomerantz is also a U of I graduate and major contributor to the school. So, based on the faulty logic suggested by the faculty, Pomerantz would also be sympathetic to the Iowa City crowd.

That gives the U of I three times the voting power on Wellmark's board that Wellmark has on the regents' board.

One thing that is true is that the roots of the current dispute over selecting the U of I president can be traced to the 21st floor of the Ruan Building in Des Moines, where Wellmark has its corporate offices.

That doesn't mean Wellmark is calling the shots, though, because it's not.

Still, there was an interesting tit-for-tat.

Former U of I president David Skorton forced the resignation two years ago of former regents' chairman John Forsyth, who was and is Wellmark's chief executive officer.

Skorton in turn received a low pay raise, which most people believe caused him to start looking for a new job.

One interpretation is that Forsyth's replacement as regents chairman - Des Moines businessman Mike Gartner, who happens to be Forsyth's friend and political ally on city political issues - led an effort to punish Skorton when it came time for Skorton's next pay raise.

Another interpretation is that the lower raise wasn't Gartner's doing, but a reflection of the fact that Skorton met fewer of his goals than the two other presidents.

In any event, Skorton found another job as president of Cornell University less than six months after the pay snub, at more than double his U of I pay.

It's worth taking a closer look at the circumstances surrounding Forsyth's resignation, if for no other reason than that is when the current nastiness began.

The resignation was put in motion when the U of I hospital told Wellmark in 2004 that it wanted a new contract that would provide higher payments for certain procedures.

Wellmark resisted because, rather than raising payments, its goal was to control health care costs. In fact, the health insurer had used its muscle to hold down reimbursements to many of the state's hospitals.

Wellmark didn't do that with the U of I hospital, though.

The university hospital brought the fight to Wellmark.

Forsyth initially stayed out of the dispute, as he had agreed to do when he joined the regents.

Later, he has said, when he saw what the hospital was asking, he realized that if he stayed on the sidelines, he would be doing a disservice to all the businesses and individuals in Iowa that depend on Wellmark to control health care costs.

He resigned from the regents and got involved in the contract negotiations. The result was that the U of I hospitals eventually agreed to a new contract that had no significant payment changes.

At the time, nobody bothered to mention that the U of I also had conflicting interests.

As a hospital, it wanted to be paid more for many of the complicated procedures it performed. But as one of the largest employers in the state, the university also had a duty to help contain health care costs.

The truth is, large institutions can't avoid having conflicts of interests. They exist, or should exist, on the boards of virtually every major business and institution in the nation.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that boards that don't have members who represent conflicting interests aren't doing their jobs, because they aren't providing the full picture that a good chief executive needs to do the job.

If you try to eliminate all the potential conflicts, you wind up with a group of like-minded and probably unimaginative people.

The best solution is to make sure the conflicts are known and declared and treated accordingly.