Private Health Insurers Bawl About Mistreatment

Just last year, the five wealthiest health insurance companies in America averaged profits of $12.2 billion, an increase of $4.4 billion, or 56 percent, from 2008.  CEO compensation for these corporations ranged from three million to $24 million - heady incentives for greedy executives who don't give a damn about the patients they provide for.  And now here they come, whining and bawling about how the Obama Administration is "vilifying" them for trying to make an "honest" living.  Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), told the Associated Press that the fat cat insurers he represents are NOT the villains.  He primly insists that  "for every dollar spent on health care in America, less than one penny goes toward health plan profits. The focus needs to be on the other 99 cents."

Igor Volsky isn't buying it:  To hear them tell it, the insurance industry is a low-profit industry that spends just one cent of every premium dollar on administration and strives to reduce costs by encouraging efficiencies...  But the argument that insurers run a tight ship is misleading, on several counts, not least of which is the fact that insurers are planning to spend "more than $1 million" not on health care claims — as their justification for the premium hikes would suggest — but "to run television ads on cable stations nationwide beginning in the next few days to push back on the attacks on insurers."  That $1 million ad fund will presumably come from the one penny that goes towards health care profits. But this too is misleading. Zirkelbach is clever enough to compare the private insurance industry’s administrative spending to national health care expenditures — 45 percent of which includes spending in Medicare, Medicaid and other public programs. In the context of total spending, insurers administrative costs may look small, but compared to the revenues of private insurers, administrative spending is seen as far more substantial. Insurers skim off 15-20 percent of premium dollars for administrative costs and profits which fund TV ad campaigns, Washington lobbyists, lavish company retreats and outlandish CEO salaries.

"Poverty wants much; but avarice, everything"  ~ Publilius Syrus

Comments

[Amanda]

What else are they going to do but whine? Bunch of vampires.