Health insurance providers find ways to prosper as more people lose coverage

[eridani]

http://www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/health_insurance_providers_find_ways_to_prosper_as_more_people_lose_coverag/


UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest U.S. health insurer, last month reported that its second quarter profit more than doubled to $859 million, while its revenues surged 79% even as enrollments fell. In other words, the company made more money from fewer people. Not every health insurer had such strong results, but a look at recent second quarter earnings reports shows that most continue to earn large profits even as the economy stagnates and tens of millions of Americans go without health insurance.

The comments these insurance company executives made to Wall Street offer an enlightening account of how they plan to grow their profits and how attention to the bottom line trumps their ostensible mission of providing affordable health care to all Americans. This view was articulated most clearly by Aetna Inc. CEO Ron Williams, who said on a conference call with industry analysts, “We would be willing to forgo membership growth if necessary. We have a clear bias toward profitability over growth.”

Because each health insurer has a unique mix of medical, dental, and prescription drug operations as well as different combinations of Medicare, Medicaid, and employer-sponsored enrollees, each has its own strong points and problem areas. What unites them all is a determination to profit from whatever economic trends emerge in the future. This is, of course, to be expected from publicly-traded companies with a legal responsibility to maximize earnings to shareholders. It does, however, illustrate how efforts to profit from health care can be inherently at odds with making health care widely available and affordable. These two cross purposes become most apparent when the health industry addresses the financial community.

[Union Yes]

1. It's called selective coverage and cherrypicking healthy policy holders.

It defines corruption. Sad health care system we got. Destroyed by free market for profit greed.

[The Magistrate]

2. It Is A Simple Fact, Ma'am: Reform Can Only Be Had By Destroying The Private Insurance Profiteers

[eridani]

4. Or forcing them out of the Enron business model and into acting like private life insurers

Private life insurers coexist well with Social Security survivors' benefits, because if you work, you pay into the fund. If you die before your kids reach majority, then they get the payments. If you want them to have more than that, you are free to get private insurance, but when you do that, you aren't taking any money at all away from the pool used to pay benefits to those who can't afford private plans.

[The Magistrate]

5. The Companies As They Exist At Present, Ma'am, Will Not Be Tamed In That Manner

They cannot make a high enough percentage of profit on the old insurance model. This begins to touch on the entire structure of usury that has become the chief economic activity of our country. Companies which deal in money must provide double digit returns, or they will not be able to retain investors and share-holders. When such returns are available, even though they are gotten by producing absolutely nothing, that will be where the investment capital flows. Insurance is not simply a matter of premiums paid into a pool, out of which claims are paid. The companies all invest the premium pool, and lately have done so very recklessly, reaping additional profit, which is used to solicit investment. Down-turns in the market are always followed by increases in premiums, and other squeezes on policy-holders, to make up the deficit from market losses.

[eridani]

6. Life insurnace makes do with much lower profit margins, AFAIK

To be sure, those margins are more like those of supermarkets than like the thievery of health insurers.

[NYC_SKP]

3. I think I'm gonna be sick.

:puke:

Bust em, bust up these fuckers.