Commentary By Ron Beasley
As our current health care system collapses people will suffer but so will the health care industry and the insurance companies as fewer and fewer people can afford their services. It's already happening:
A weak economy has reduced the insurer's customer base
Regence BlueCross BlueShield, Oregon's largest health insurer, will cut
120 jobs by the end of the year, part of a broad effort to trim costs
in a recession that' s chipped away at the numbers of insured.
The
non-profit insurer, which employs about 2,900 people in Oregon, has
been losing business over the course of the year and will weather
another blow starting Jan. 1, when it loses 100,000 state employees to
a competitor.
The insurer currently insures about 900,000 people in Oregon, down from an average of about 1 million.
Layoffs,
business failures and the down economy have played a large role in the
firm's restructuring, said spokeswoman Samantha Meese.
"It has
affected us in a couple of ways," Meese said. "When a company reduces
the benefit package, that also impacts our bottom line."
The insurer will also cut 280 jobs in Washington, Idaho and Utah.
This
year, Regence BlueCross asked for a premium hike of 16 percent, a jump
that caused the Public Employees' Benefit Board to opt for competitior
Providence Health Plans, which outbid Regence by $2 million. "Ongoing
economic challenges and the realities of health care reform require us
to adapt our business, including our workforce to be more nimble,
efficient and competitive," Meese said.
The number of uninsured continues to increase because of the economy but since nothing is being done to reduce costs, including the health care bills currently on the table, that will not improve when people begin to go back to work.
Of course the oligarchs at Goldman who have been so wise the last few years think otherwise:
Goldman To Private Insurers: No Health Care Reform At All Is Best
A Goldman Sachs analysis of health care legislation has concluded that,
as far as the bottom line for insurance companies is concerned, the
best thing to do is nothing. A close second would be passing a
watered-down version of the Senate Finance Committee's bill.
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