Insurance Mergers Serve Profits, not Patients

Insurance Merger Serves Profits, not Patients

I just read that insurance giant, WellPoint is aggressively seeking more insurance companies to absorb, further reducing health competition. Both in the past and for the future, their plans also include buying non-profit companies and turning them to for-profit companies. WellPoint’s spokesman, Jim Kappel, says that “We believe we are in an industry suitable for further consolidation."

According to AMNews that reviewed the transcript, Wayne DeVeydt, WellPoint's executive vice president and chief financial officer, stated at a recent conference.

"If you looked at us 10 years ago, the top 10 companies made up 27% [of the market]. Today the top 10 companies make up 54%. I would venture to say that in the next five to 10 years, the top 10 will make up 75% to 80%. So we are far from being done on consolidation.”

I don’t know about you, but I do not want the top 10 insurance companies, who are already squeezing both patients and physicians while they post record profits, controlling 80% of the whole health insurance industry.

This whole scenario only highlights the need for the federal government to change the historical anti-trust exemption given to insurance. Patients and their physicians become helpless against such giants when there is no competition to turn to if you don’t like how they do business. While insurance already controls so much of our healthcare experience, I don’t want to hand them more on a silver platter.

I understand people need to earn livings and create and maintain profitable companies, but it should not be done at the continued unjust expense and burden of patients and the physicians and other health professionals who provide their care. We keep losing the focus of healthcare – the well-being of the patients and the continued ability to provide quality care by professionals.

Start writing your federal senators and representatives to revoke the anti-trust exemption for insurance (, and in so doing take a step toward more ethical health care. (I’ll try to get more up on the website soon about this aspect of anti-trust laws affecting your healthcare.)

A few notes on Wellpoint:
• Former CEO, Larry Glasscock’s total compensation for 2006: $14.5 million (per Indianapolis Star)
• The company earned $868 million in the third quarter of 2007, and has earned a total of $2.9 billion for the first 9 months of 2007 (total revenue was $15.23 billion)
• At the end of the third quarter it has 34.8 million members (up 615,000 from the year before) (How is a private practice physician supposed to negotiate against THAT!
• In 2006 a federal judge approved a settlement of two lawsuits that alleged Wellpoint deliberately delayed and denied reimbursements for physician services. They were one of the last settlements in findings against several national insurance companies, pointing to industry wide problems in ethical practice.

• In 2005 WellPoint paid $6.5 billion to obtain the parent company of New York’s Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield

Other insurance profits:
** UnitedHealth’s 3rd quarter profit this year rose 26%
Humana’s 3rd quarter profit rose 90%