Health Insurance Confesses it Cares More about Itself than Patients

American Medical News (May 19th) reports that major health insurance plans stated clearly that they do not care if they lose members by raising premiums, as long as they increase profits even more.

Financial data from the 1st quarter of 2008 (only 3 months) shows:

• Aetna brought in over $7.5 billion in revenue with a 3 month profit of over $431 million. (But it was down $3 million from the first quarter of last year)
• Humana brought in $6.9 billion in revenue and made $80 million profit (actually up from $71 million for the first 3 months of 2007)
• UnitedHealth brought in $20.3 billion revenue with a $994 million profit (up from $927 million for 3 months of 2007)
• Wellpoint brought in $15.5 billion with profit of $588 million (sadly it is down from $778 million from the first 3 months of 2007)

This is for THREE MONTHS!!!! January - March, 2008.

According to the article, the CEO of Wellpoint states: "We will not sacrifice profitability for membership".
They will give up members as they raise premium prices to perform better on Wall Street. Ironically they will be doing some of it around the time of Cover the Uninsured Week sponsored by the Robert Wood Foundation to bring attention to the problem of the uninsured -- clearly not a concern for insurance companies. Or UnitedHealth's CEO, Hemsley: "We continue to protect our margins. . . ."

Not only do they not care about patients, they don't care about doctors either. The same Wellpoint CEO, Angela Brady, assures investors that because Wellpoint has market power (mostly through gobbling up other companies), it gives Wellpoint "the ability to lean hard on its network doctors to accept lower reimbursement." (AMNews)

I guess it is business as usual -- massive insurance companies, protected by our elected leaders who fail to call them to task (or upset their apple carts) -- raising costs to patients and creating unfair pay reductions for physicians.

I am a self-employed individual who gets to pay high rates, with a high deductibles and who is often just priced out after a few years with a company because insurance decides as I get older I'm more of a risk -- whether or not I use the insurance! More and more companies are dropping benefits or raising the cost to employees.

Until we have leaders who have the guts and the smarts to address the excess of corporate health insurance greed, we will have growing numbers of uninsured -- not just college kids, not just those close to the poverty line, but middle class Americans -- all of us. And we won't have leaders who step up to the task until patients like you and me make noise and demand it.