With health reform floundering, Democrats have renewed their attacks on the insurance industry and a new report out today hopes to bolster their case that insurance company practices need to be reigned in. The report finds that the top five largest for-profit insurance companies increased their profits by $12.2 billion last year while dropping coverage for 2.7 million Americans.

As a group, WellPoint, Aetna, UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Cigna saw their profits jump 56 percent in 2009 up $4.4 billion over the previous year, according to the report. Four out of five companies saw profits increase while insuring fewer people. Cigna increased earnings by 346 percent while UnitedHealth shed 1.7 million beneficiaries. Aetna, which increased its membership and percentage of premiums spent on medical care, was the only company to see less income in 2009 than 2008.

“Increasing your profits, dropping people is a specific corporate strategy,” said Richard Kirsch of Health Care for America Now, the progressive coalition that prepared the report. “What the big health insurance companies do to please Wall Street denies affordable health insurance to millions of Americans, millions more Americans every year.”

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I’m Negotiating for the Republicans

It became even more obvious that bipartisanship isn’t possible when MSNBC’s chuck Todd asked Sen. Chuck Grassley if he was “willing to be one of just three or four Senate Republicans that support an eventual deal if you get what you want out of the Senate Finance Committee and it’s an agreed upon deal with the Gang of Six.”   Grassley’s reply?  “Certainly not. [snip]  I’m negotiating for Republicans and if I can’t negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I’m not a very good representative of my party.”²

Change?

When the country voted for change in the 2008 election part of the platform of change was health care reform and that’s exactly what the Democrats need to band together and deliver up. Any bill they deliver should include a public option for health insurance in spite of the efforts of the insurance companies to sabotage the public option. I found it quite interesting that on the announcement that the public option might be dead the stocks for insurance companies went up. And that IS what all the opposition is about – a possible loss of obscene profits for insurance companies.

Executive Salaries of Insurance Companies

Let’s face it, it is definitely in the best interest of insurance CEOs to have no public option.  More competition means lower profits and lower profits might eat into their grossly bloated salaries.  Here’s a look at what some of the big insurance company executives make:

NAME, TITLE, COMPANY ANNUAL COMPENSATION

H. Edward Hanway, Chair/CEO, Cigna Corp., $30.16 million (Cigna is one of the financial backers of the Manhattan Institute that Betsy McCoughey was a part of.)

Ronald A. Williams, Chair/CEO, Aetna Inc., $23,045,834 (2007)

David B. Snow, Jr, Chair/CEO, Medco Health, $21.76 million

Dale B. Wolf, CEO, Coventry Health Care, $20.86 million

Michael B. MCallister, CEO, Humana Inc., $20.06 million

Jay M. Gellert, President/CEO, Health Net, $16.65 million

Stephen J. Hemsley, CEO, UnitedHealth Group, $13,164,529 (2007)

Raymond McCaskey, CEO, Health Care Service Corp., (Blue Cross Blue Shield), $10.3 million (in 2007; up 78% from 2006)

Angela F. Braly, President/CEO, Wellpoint, $9,094,771   ¹

Yes, I think it’s high time for the Democrats to do what they were elected to do.  Just because the opposition to health care reform is loud, it doesn’t mean it’s right or the majority of Americans.

WASHINGTON — Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.

Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the heated opposition was evidence that Republicans had made a political calculation to draw a line against any health care changes, the latest in a string of major administration proposals that Republicans have opposed.

“The Republican leadership,” Mr. Emanuel said, “has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”

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Democrats on a key Senate committee have devised a new plan with a public option that reduces the cost of the plan from the earlier proposed plan that cost $1 trillion and left millions uninsured.

The Obama administration took the health care reform show on the road yesterday with a town hall meeting in Virginia. President Obama made it clear in that meeting that doing nothing is not an option and that health care reform is imperative if the country is to have a full economic recovery.

The Health Care Industry vs. Health Reform

By Wendell Potter

I’m the former insurance industry insider now speaking out about how big for-profit insurers have hijacked our health care system and turned it into a giant ATM for Wall Street investors, and how the industry is using its massive wealth and influence to determine what is (and is not) included in the health care reform legislation members of Congress are now writing.

Although by most measures I had a great career in the insurance industry (four years at Humana and nearly 15 at CIGNA), in recent years I had grown increasingly uncomfortable serving as one of the industry’s top PR executives. In addition to my responsibilities at CIGNA, which included serving as the company’s chief spokesman to the media on all corporate and financial matters, I also served on a lot of trade association committees and industry-financed coalitions, many of which were essentially front groups for insurers. So I was in a unique position to see not only how Wall Street analysts and investors influence decisions insurance company executives make but also how the industry has carried out behind-the-scenes PR and lobbying campaigns to kill or weaken any health care reform efforts that threatened insurers’ profitability.

I also have seen how the industry’s practices — especially those of the for-profit insurers that are under constant pressure from Wall Street to meet their profit expectations — have contributed to the tragedy of nearly 50 million people being uninsured as well as to the growing number of Americans who, because insurers now require them to pay thousands of dollars out of their own pockets before their coverage kicks in — are underinsured. An estimated 25 million of us now fall into that category.

What I saw happening over the past few years was a steady movement away from the concept of insurance and toward “individual responsibility,” a term used a lot by insurers and their ideological allies. This is playing out as a continuous shifting of the financial burden of health care costs away from insurers and employers and onto the backs of individuals. As a result, more and more sick people are not going to the doctor or picking up their prescriptions because of costs. If they are unfortunate enough to become seriously ill or injured, many people enrolled in these plans find themselves on the hook for such high medical bills that they are losing their homes to foreclosure or being forced into bankruptcy.

What I saw happening over the past few years was a steady movement away from the concept of insurance and toward “individual responsibility,” a term used a lot by insurers and their ideological allies. This is playing out as a continuous shifting of the financial burden of health care costs away from insurers and employers and onto the backs of individuals. As a result, more and more sick people are not going to the doctor or picking up their prescriptions because of costs. If they are unfortunate enough to become seriously ill or injured, many people enrolled in these plans find themselves on the hook for such high medical bills that they are losing their homes to foreclosure or being forced into bankruptcy.

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