If we don’t create competition for our bloated American Health Insurance Corporations (and a public option like Medicare for all would provide that necessary element), we will continue to see these large corporations manipulate their markets to raise rates for health care policies to levels that few if anyone can afford.
Example? Anthem Blue Cross, a subsidiary of WellPoint Incorporated, which raised rates on policies held by 800,000 people in California by from 30 to 39%, effective March 1st:
In a letter faxed to Anthem Blue Cross, US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called for the insurer to publicly explain why it raised premiums.
“With so many families already affected by rising costs, I was very disturbed to learn through media accounts that Anthem Blue Cross plans to raise premiums for its California customers by as much as 39 percent,” or 15 times faster than inflation, Sebelius wrote.
The rate hikes were “even more difficult to understand” in the light of soaring profits at Anthem Blue Cross’s parent company, WellPoint Incorporated, Sebelius said.
WellPoint earned 2.7 billion dollars in the last quarter of 2009, she said, calling on the insurance company to “provide a detailed justification” for the increase.
2.7 BILLION DOLLARS in profits for one quarter? That’s getting close to real money, the kind Goldman Sachs steals from the US public generates. Wellpoint must need that extra money really badly. I mean consider its expenses: it paid its CEO $10 Million and spent $9.5 Million to lobby against health care reform. That money has got to come from somewhere, folks:
The AFL-CIO calls out Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which has requested a rate hike of up to 30 percent in Connecticut, for example, while spending more than $9.5 million on lobbying activities.
Oh my! There’s another Wellpoint company in Connecticut which hiked its health insurance rates 30%? It obviously doesn’t pay to live in a state that starts with the letter C (or in which Wellpoint operates), unless you are a Wellpoint senior executive, that is. But give them this: Wellppoint is a very understanding company if its PR department does say so itself:
Many policyholders say the rate hikes are the largest they can remember, and they fear that subsequent premium growth will narrow their options — leaving them to buy policies with higher deductibles and less coverage or putting health insurance out of reach altogether.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mark Weiss, 63, a Century City podiatrist whose Anthem policy for himself and his wife will rise 35%. The couple’s annual insurance bill will jump to $27,336 from $20,184.
“I think it’s just unconscionable,” said Weiss, a member of Blue Cross for 30 years.
Woodland Hills-based Anthem declined to say how many individual policyholders will be affected or what a typical increase will be under the new pricing, which will vary from one individual to another. But the company defended its premiums, even as it tried to strike a sympathetic tone.
“We understand and strongly share our members’ concerns over the rising cost of healthcare services and the corresponding adverse impact on insurance premiums,” the company said in a statement.
See, they care, Californians. Just not enough to stop raising the cost of your insurance to a level 15 times the rate of inflation.
Well, teabaggers, I hope you’re happy now. You helped the insurance industry defeat even a very limited health care reform bill, one that did not include a public option which would have provided real competition in the marketplace for health insurance. You do know what competition is, right, being defenders of Capitalism and all? It’s the prime ingredient for any market to self regulate. Without meaningful competition you end up with a country that pays on average twice the amount other developed nations pay for their health care.
Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have more than doubled in the last 9 years, a rate 3 times faster than cumulative wage increases.
The United States spent approximately $2.2 trillion on health care in 2007, or $7,421 per person. This comes to 16.2% of GDP, nearly twice the average of other developed nations.
Health care costs doubled from 1996 to 2006, and are projected to rise to 25% of GDP in 2025 and 49% in 2082.
[Links to footnotes providing sources for this information is not provided in this excerpt. Please go to the website from which this excerpt is taken to find those sources]
And now you and the rest of us get to reap the reward for your efforts: higher prices to pay for the one thing that, next to food and shelter is a critical necessity for life in our times: health care coverage. I sure hope none of you have health insurance policies with a Wellpoint company. That might be poetic justice, but I don’t wish ill on anyone, even those who consider progressives and liberals like myself to be their sworn enemies.
