Commentary By Ron Beasley
In the middle of a health care debate does this make a lot of sense?
Aetna Forcing 600,000-Plus To Lose Coverage In Effort To Raise Profits
Health insurance giant Aetna is planning to force up to 650,000
clients to drop their coverage next year as it seeks to raise
additional revenue to meet profit expectations.In a third-quarter earnings conference call in late October, officials at Aetna announced
that in an effort to improve on a less-than-anticipated profit margin
in 2009, they would be raising prices on their consumers in 2010. The
insurance giant predicted that the company would subsequently lose
between 300,000 and 350,000 members next year from its national account
as well as another 300,000 from smaller group accounts."The pricing we put in place for 2009 turned out to not really be
what we needed to achieve the results and margins that we had
historically been delivering," said chairman and CEO Ron Williams. "We
view 2010 as a repositioning year, a year that does not fully reflect
the earnings potential of our business. Our pricing actions should have
a noticeable effect beginning in the first quarter of 2010, with
additional financial impact realized during the remaining three
quarters of the year."
Is it really a good move to demonstrate such greed and hubris when you are already under attack? Will this make it more difficult for the blue dogs and even some Republicans to oppose a strong public option?
Of course this is being driven by the real problem which is not addressed in any of the current health care legislation - rising costs.
Update:
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And it is all about cost. As you might recall I am uninsured because no company will write an insurance policy for a 63 year old and about a month and a half ago I had a medical adventure. I paid the $731.00 ambulance bill and made arrangements to pay about 60% of the nearly $5,000 hospital bill.
Today I received the above bill from the emergency room physician who spent about five minutes with me. I will add another 10 minutes for looking at the X-rays and the EKG but that still comes to over $2,400 an hour. I will call them on Monday and agree to pay 50% ( still outrageous) - about what Medicare or an insurance company would pay. If they don't agree I will let them take me to collection where they may get pennies on the dollar several months from now.
And there are millions of stories just like yours-none of them good. But it makes no difference to the sold out bastards that have got it all in our congress.
ReplyDelete"I will call them on Monday and agree to pay 50% ( still outrageous) - about what Medicare or an insurance company would pay."
ReplyDeleteWhich means a) that they are billing cash customers twice what they bill contract customers and b) that they are charging you $600 for something that costs them less than $200 to produce. But, and this is a really big "but," the insurance companies are the problem, the cause of high health care costs, and the source of all things evil. We don't need to change anything about the way these people are charging you because passing legislation with a "public option" will solve all of the problems of cost and will result in health care instantly becoming almost free.