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So screams the Business Insider.
If you need a guide to the health reform debate in Washington, take a look at health insurance company stocks. When the debate is going the right way – towards quality, affordable health care for everyone, towards getting people out from under the insurance industry’s crushing monopoly – insurance company stocks take a dive. When the debate is moving against what America wants – towards more private industry, less insurance regulations, and the like – health care stocks soar.
Right now, they’re soaring. The Indianapolis Star goes into more detail:
Shares of the Indianapolis-based health insurance giant surged to a 52-week high Thursday as the prospects for a new government-run "public option" health plan faded amid intense Senate debate. WellPoint rivals Cigna and UnitedHealth Group also hit 52-week highs.
It’s a sign, more than one observer suggested, of victory for private health insurers, which strenuously fought the public option.
"Obviously, the market thinks WellPoint’s a winner," said Daniel Evans, chief executive of Clarian Health, an Indianapolis-based hospital system. "If the public option is no longer on the table, then WellPoint is a winner because it’s not threatened by a government competitor."
Wall Street is what has turned our nation’s health care companies into profiteers.
16 years ago, before most of the insurance companies were publicly traded, they spent 95% of premium dollars on health care. That level is comparable to Medicare, which spends 97% of premium dollars on care. But once these companies went public and started trading on Wall Street, the relentless drive for profit drove down that percentage to where it sits today, at 81%.
Wall Street pressures directly caused insurance companies to deny more care. Wall Street accelerated the process by which insurance companies deny as much care as they can, which forces more people into bankruptcy (when they have to pay out of pocket for care their insurance company won’t cover) and leaves millions uninsured (if you’re bankrupt, it’s hard to pay premiums). And being uninsured can be a death sentence.
The way Wall Street responds to the health care debate drives these companies. When insurance company stock prices catch fire as the public health insurance option is killed in the Senate, you can bet that these companies are watching and feel supported in their effort to kill any and all health reform that would hurt their bottom line.
Wall Street-run health care is the driving reason that if the insurance companies win, we lose.
Wall Street run health care is making huge profits right now. It’s also making Americans sicker and sicker. A health care reform bill that does not take away Wall Street’s power – one without a public option, one that doesn’t mandate insurers spend 90% of their premiums on care, one without strict regulations on denying care or charging more to certain customers – will tacitly support the way the health care business works now, with Wall Street in charge.
The Senate bill, in too many ways, is the Wall Street bill. The House bill stands up to Wall Street. That’s presents real problems for the American people, problems that must be fixed before this bill is sent to the President’s desk.
(also posted at the NOW! blog)
I’m proud to work for Health Care for America Now
10 Comments
how does it do that?
maybe the mandates that force people to purchase a defective product? or the probably nonviable so-called public option that is predicted to be more expensive than private insurance?
or maybe you are referring to the provision that will undermine state insurance regulation?
the mandate is the insurance company bailout. the combination of that without sufficient cost control will doom the plan. but you know the saying on the street…. YBGIBG. you’ll be gone, i’ll be gone. and what the dems seem most interested in doing right now is nothing more than kicking the healthcare can down the road while maximizing the flow of dollars from FIRE industries to dems (and keeping them from going to the republicans).
Let’s see…
A public option. Much stronger regulations. Repealing the anti-trust provisions. Killing annual caps on benefits. I can go on…
a public option that will cost more than competing private plans. regulations that will be enforced how and by whom (see my comment @2).
please do go on, because nothing you’ve mentioned actually qualifies as “standing up to wall street” when taken in context of the mandates and increasing the amount of public money funneled to and utterly wasted by insurance companies every year (now at something like $350-400 billion/per year)
standing up to wall street – NOT.
I don’t know about you’ll, but some people I talk to are not going to comply with paying these people a fucking dime. And write this in stone, these insurance companies are going to be toast in a future that is so in our face.
The tipping point is fast approaching, people worldwide have had enough. Yes, this is a rant, I don’t give a fuck about the details of what they are doing, because it is what they always do, bend over motherfuckers. I could apologize for the language but I won’t.
I hope I offend you enough to get mad, then get mad enough to realize that the system is broken and working within it is not very effective because you are not fighting the right people, they sold out long ago, they are but minions of those with the gold. Quit buying their shit. Quit obeying there rules which are only made to control us and keep them in high cotton. I’ll start, you with me kimosabe.
This post is absolutely among the best things that I have read in 8 months of ongoing health care debate.
This is it.
Behind the healthCos — bad as they are! — lies Wall Street, a globalized feeding frenzy for profit.
And the longer they can stall health care reform, or botch it up, the better their odds of avoiding a cleanup of Casino Capitalism.
I hope that this post is escalated, and/or re-run over the weekend.
This is where the rubber hits the road.
Thanks, appreciate the kind words.
Always glad to see someone blow away the smoke, remove a few mirrors, and reveal the elegant purse as the ear of a sow, Jason.
For Mandy, evidence that people are fed up: Aetna Provider Change:
Aetna Public Employees Plan announced that the University of Washington Medical Center, Harborview Medical Center, and University of Washington Physicians Group will no longer participate in the Aetna network effective January 1, 2010. Learn more.
i agree, the words are great — it’s the just policy prescription that goes with them i’ve been objecting to for over a yeaer: that we must accommodate and not challenge the primary position of insurance companies.
There are, as the wrong wingers claim, death boards.
Death Boards of Directors of the death insurance corporations.
Denying health care illegitimately is killing for profit plain and simple.
Capitalism is good when it serves the customers. But customers are now 2nd class WRT the investors. When kapitalizm kills or lets humans die for profit then it has become a criminal enterprise. Capitalism fails when markets aren’t free. When was the last time you saw a price war between oil companies? Or insurance companies? Never, because these aren’t free markets. Almost everyone needs to drive and to have insurance. These are captive markets. Guaranteed profit all around. No need to compete. But not everyone needs or wants an LCD TV. So these companies compete for the available dollars with better products and prices.
Overlong screed follows:
To the right wingers who claim to be christians and say, ~why should I pay for someone else’s health care?~ Because jesus would. What are the cons doing that jesus would approve of? How can an xian claim to protect marriage when they don’t protest divorce? Jesus forbade it. How can an xian not help those less fortunate? How can an xian not turn the other cheek?
Capitalism itself is essentially anti-christian. Which is fine for me since I’m a Agnostic Quantum Deist. But xians? Jesus said rich people have as much chance of getting to heaven as a camel has to fly thru the eye of a needle. But you never hear that on the floor of the senate. Cons cherry pick the bible (usually the old testament) to justify their actions. You do hear things from cons like: “an eye for an eye.” Sorry! That’s old testament. Jesus changed it to turn the other cheek. If a con’s goal is to make you as rich as possible then he is doing his best to keep you out of heaven.
Jesus is NEW TESTAMENT, not old, in case you didn’t know. And don’t forget (if you even knew) that the old testament is part of the jewish AND muslim religions. Belief in christ is where they split. Follow “an eye for an eye” and you’re siding with the terrists and rejecting christ.
He said you can’t worship god and mammon. If you don’t know what mammon is then you’re a faux christian; an xian. RTFB.
But cons worship money (aka mammon) above all else. They make human sacrifices to the Almighty Dollar. Anything for a profit. Research the Pinto incident. They knew the car was unsafe but calculated that they would profit more by not fixing it. They put a price on a human life and coldly calculated that even with wrongful death lawsuits they would still make more profit than if they fixed the car. As far as I am concerned, those executives were executioners. Murderers. All for profit. They made human sacrifices to the holy Dollar.
Capitalism is good. But capitalism needs limits. It cannot be allowed to kill people. This isn’t a left vs right or a dem vs rep issue. It’s a capitalism at any cost vs human well-being issue. Dollarists vs populace. Aristocracy vs peasants.
The dollarists have suckered in the non-rich by convincing them that they are helping their finances. But look at the wealth gap: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/the-rich-get-richer-income-and-wealth-gap-grows-over-the-past-d/19106323. Where is their money coming from? According to the dollarists, a high tide raises all the boats. Just some more than others. Come on people, sit down and look at how your finances have been affected over the years. Go to any legitimate web site (eg a .gov) and see how the wealth of the richest has changed compared to yours. Sure dollar wise they should make more. But percentage wise there should be more equality. Given the overall increase in wealth, they are taking more. This is a fact. Upturns in the economy are often attributed to “increases in worker productivity.” Not investor productivity. How do you benefit from the lowering of your total compensation? Remember when there was sick time PLUS vacation time? Now there’s comp time which is used for both, but there are fewer total days. Who wins there? In my first job (1985) I had 7 sick events and 10 vacation days a year. Now there’s just 10 days comp time. Now we have longer hours. Who works only 40 hrs/week? Tricks to claw back money from the employees is how a lot of productivity is increased. More work for less expense is the definition of productivity. Who remembers the single bread winner days? Children being raised by parents rather than strangers? If the total wealth of the country was increasing and supposedly raising all of the boats why do you have less than your parents? This is the first generation for the non-rich to have less wealth than its parents. But the rich are richer. Look at your net compensation. Not just dollars after taxes. Include the fact that your sick days sucked up vacation days. The cost of your insurance. Any unpaid hours > 40/wk. Holidays. Has your 401(k) match gone up or down? Can you still afford a 401(k)? I can’t. Remember that thing called a pension? Companies employing people for 20, 30, hell 50! years?
Now remember that last layoff? Did you check the change in your ex-employer’s stock price? That’s your salary and benefits being sucked from you pumping up that price. How much did paying for your insurance hit your bottom line? Include that in your total compensation. The dollarists fool you by making that one number, income tax, seem lower while their policies are allowing your employer to screw you out of as much money as they can. They push down your bottom line to raise theirs. Look at your net worth now vs 10 years ago. Compare that to the average (or median or modal) increase in, say, conservative senators’ net worth. Don’t forget it was dollarist policies that led to the sub-prime crisis and the banking meltdown. These people were making megabucks. How are they doing compared to you? They lose billions and still get bonuses. How much would you need to fuck up to get fired? Wealth hath its priviledges.
Dollarists used Walter Reid as an example of how the government can’t provide health care. That was a lie because the problems occurred after it was privatized. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030902082.html. To dollarists, supporting our troops means letting them lie in urine while the company profits. Do you really trust a company that puts soldiers in piss for profit to give you the best health care?
Look any of this up. Don’t take ANYTHING you read or hear as true. Yes, this too. Research it. The left and the right both suck. The right just sucks more. Both dems and reps have dollarists. Reps just have more. Look at the bills and laws. See how much support for the troops was cut by the dollarists.
I find this to be an interesting observation: Liberal representatives make sacrifices in support of their policies.
Reinstating the Paris Hilton tax cuts means the next generation of Kennedys will inherit less. But they feel that it will help other people in the country. A sacrifice to help others.
Conservatives always help themselves. See Pinto.
If abortion was profitable you’d see an about face on that issue. Save the fetus! Err, within rea$on of course.
E Pleb Neesta
GODISNOWHERE
Blessed are the cheese makers.
If birth control causes promiscuity then confession causes sin.