Times are tough. Recession might be over, but the hurt lingers, and no one knows when it'll go away. But it seems that California's Anthem Blue Cross, a unit of WellPoint Inc., has presumed that people are healthy enough financially and will be able to afford a hike of 39% in their premium rates.

Well, guess that was wrong. Not only did Blue Anthem and WellPoint attract a lot of public criticism because of the announcement, a full blown Congressional inquiry has been initiated and executives of the insurer have been called into question time and again.

And what's more, a consumer group has slapped the insurer with a lawsuit, accusing the fourth-largest for-profit health insurer of California of illegally using "drastic" rate hikes to fierce customers to opt for health plans which are inferior.

The time is, after all, much sensitive, and only because of the recession and the financially gloomy situation. President Obama has been pushing the healthcare bill ever so fiercely and what happened with Blue Anthem just goes on to prove the Opposition's point - that the revamp of healthcare would result in undue cost rises.

It's not like WellPoint has not tried to defend itself. Chief of the company has stressed that the rise is a direct result of the very difficult financial situation that the company itself is facing. Not very convincing though, as recently shared figures revealed that four major insurers of the country managed to bag huge profits over the past year.

So can we then easily conclude that WellPoint is being grossly unfair? Not really, actually. Things are not always so simple I guess. The insurer must have good reasons, maybe it is just not being able to elaborate that well. After all, considering the kind of sentiments that the general population has as of now, no company would deliberately risk becoming the target of criticism.