Health Care Now The five largest U.S. health insurance companies sailed through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression to set new industry profit records in 2009, a feat accomplished by leaving behind 2.7 million americans who had been inprivate health plans. For customers who kept their benefits, the insurers raised rates and cost-sharing,and cut the share of premiums spent on medical care. Executives and shareholders of the five biggest for-profit health insurers, UnitedHealthGroup inc., WellPoint inc., Aetna Inc., Humana Inc., and Cigna Corp., enjoyed combined profit of $12.2 billion in 2009, up 56 percent from the previous year. It was the best year ever for Big Insurance. The 2009 financial reports from the nation’s five largest insurance companies reveal that: The firms made $12.2 billion, an increase of $4.4 billion, or 56 percent, from 2008. Four out of the five companies saw earnings increases, with CIGNA’s profits jumping 346 percent. The companies provided private insurance coverage to 2.7 million fewer people than the year before. Four out of the five companies insured fewer people through private coverage. UnitedHealth alone insured 1.7 million fewer people through employer-based or individual coverage. All but one of the five companies increased the number of people they covered through public insurance programs (Medicaid, CHIP and Medicare). UnitedHealth added 680,000 people in public plans. The proportion of premium dollars spent on health care expenses went down for three of the five firms, with higher proportions going to administrative expenses and profits. Read more.
It was a long hot August for those who would like to see health care reform, as rabid “Town Hall” protesters proffered visions of public options that would lead to death panels and socialism and government tax collectors with special alien mind control powers that would use sex education and child indoctrination and black helicopters as the means for gay people to impose their dangerous agenda on the innocent, God-fearing citizens of someplace in Mississippi that I’m not likely to ever visit.
Part of the reason that opposition was so rabid was because health care interests were spending millions upon millions of dollars doing...well, doing whatever the opposite of giving a distemper shot to the angry mob might be, anyway.
So wouldn’t it be great if all the CEOs of all those health care interests were to gather at one time and place so you could, shall we say, gently express your own thoughts regarding the issues of reform and public options?
By an amazing coincidence, that’s exactly what’s going to happen Thursday in Washington, DC, as the Patient Centered Primary Care Cooperative (PCPCC) holds its Annual Summit.
Follow along, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.
Opinion I'm not a terrorist, nor do I know how a terrorist thinks so putting myself in terrorist shoes and attempting to think like one may be flawed, but I can't help but think terrorist wouldn't change a thing with our current health care system. Let me make my case: Terrorist like to kill folks. Mission accomplished. It's estimated that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 deaths annually and I suggest if we leave things like they are the death toll will surely rise.
Harvard Science Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.
Every year my wife reaches the end of her Medicare Part D coverage (the infamous Doughnut hole) due to the over inflated prices of Medicare Part D prescription drugs. So she had to make a choice today. Pay her Medicare Part D Provider Prescription Solutions$315.13 for a 90 day supply of Crestor, or order Crestor Generic (there is no generic Crestor in the USA) from Canada Drugs for $145.71 for a 90 day supply of Crestor (See graphic). She went with Canada Drugs. It's a real shame when citizens of the good old USA have to rely on Canada to do the right thing when it comes to the price of prescription drugs, but my dear sweet wife of over fifty years understands it cost the insurance companies a lot of money to lobby our representatives, about $1.4 million a day, and she wouldn't want the Health Care CEO's to do without. As for me I think they're a bunch of greedy unpatriotic assholes!
Forbes David B Snow Jr CEO Medco Health, $21.76 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $36.29 million. Dale B Wolf CEO Coventry Health Care, $20.86 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $61.91 million. Michael B McCallister CEO Humana, $20.06 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $60.64 million. Ronald A Williams CEO Aetna $8.88 million. Trevor Fetter CEO Tenet Healthcare $5.80 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $19.08 million. Stephen J Hemsley CEO UnitedHealth $4.00 million. John H Hammergren CEO McKesson $44.91 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $94.59 million. Miles D White CEO Abbott Laboratories $44.76 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $76.47 million. William C Weldon CEO Johnson & Johnson $15.41 million, 5-Year Compensation Total $49.15 million. Jeffrey B Kindler CEO Pfizer $5.76 million. John C Lechleiter CEO Eli Lilly & Co $5.13 million. James M Cornelius CEO Bristol-Myers Squibb $5.06 million.
Some say the Health Care fix is in and from what I can see it is. When Single payer advocates are snubbed and left out of the debate and the greedy insurance companies are allowed to participate, that tells me the fix is in.
Politico President Barack Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) rarely pass up a chance to snub single-payer health care — a term that means a government-run system.
Politico The best way to get half the pie is ask for the whole pie,” said Katie Robbins, assistant national coordinator of Healthcare-Now, which will not endorse the public plan but acknowledges the strategy. “It is like horse trading.” Healthcare-Now doesn’t have a seat at the White House negotiating table with other interest groups, including its chief nemesis, the insurance industry. So single-payer advocates have resolved to make their cause hard to ignore. Advocates say that by making the government the sole administrator of health care, the U.S. could save billions of dollars annually on reduced administrative costs.
While researching Health Care CEO compensation I ran across this April 2008 Forbes Special Report on CEO Compensation. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw how much these folks were being paid. Hell, how hard is it to tell folks they have a pre-existing condition or hire lawyers to write fine print that will allow their company's to deny Health Care insurance claims? Really, who in the hell do these CEO's think they are? I suggest they are nothing more than pigs slopping at the trough and currently scheming as to how they can label the "Swine Flu" as a pre-existing condition. Below is a list of a few of the CEO' s, read it at your own risk, because it might make you sick.
Every year my wife reaches the end of her Medicare Part D coverage (
