OK, Quiz Time: If you were a health insurance corpo exec during the first national discussion of healthcare reform since Truman, a time when the public is pressing for a public option on the assumption that it is going to be way cheaper than anything private for-profit investor-driven health insurors have any intention of offering what with the continuous price hikes we've seen for the last 30 years running alongside a deteriorating healthcare system in which everything is a pre-existing condition and it always seems to turn out that nothing is covered and said public already, like, hates your guts, would you: Raise rates on smll businesses, the core of GOP and conservaDem voters, both of which parties are desperately trying to protect your profits in the face of enormous public opposition?
Would I go too far if I assumed your answer to that question is a resounding "Good grief, NO!" If not and that's actually your answer, um, you're wrong. That's precisely what the insurers are doing and promise they will continue to do right up to the point a real public option makes them completely irrelevant.
Insurance brokers and benefits consultants say their small business clients are seeing premiums go up an average of about 15 percent for the coming year — double the rate of last year’s increases. That would mean an annual premium that was $4,500 per employee in 2008 and $4,800 this year would rise to $5,500 in 2010.
The higher premiums at least partly reflect the inexorable rise of medical costs, which is forcing Medicare to raise premiums, too. Health insurance bills are also rising for big employers, but because they have more negotiating clout, their increases are generally not as steep.
Higher medical costs aside, some experts say they think the insurance industry, under pressure from Wall Street, is raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits.
The increases come at a politically fraught time for the insurers, as they try to fight off the creation of a government-run competitor and as they push their case that they have a central role to play in controlling the nation’s health care costs.
(emphasis added)
You gotta remember that this is the NYT Business section and they're trying hard to put the best possible spin on this whole fiasco without a whole lot to work with. I mean, reading just the above few grafs, there are enough internal contradictions to make your head explode. For instance:
The Republican corpo-puppets are running around claiming they're against reform because reform would raise premiums and make medical care more expensive, yet the insurance corpos themselves claim they're raising prices to cover the money they'll lose when they're collecting premiums from everybody in the country and there's nothing in any of the bills as currently constituted to prevent them raising premiums as much as they want. So...huh?
They're not fooling FDL's masaccio, bro.
The Times quotes several people saying that insurers are worried about the wizards of Wall Street:
“There’s no one out there who hasn’t had to do a mea culpa to Wall Street,” said Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst for Pali Capital who follows the companies. While the industry is particularly vulnerable now in Washington, she said, “it seems like they’re more afraid of Wall Street.”
That is a real problem. On the one hand, health insurance companies need to raise rates drive up stock prices and protect their stock options. On the other hand, these price increases come at exactly the wrong time, right in the middle of the legislative fight over reform. How ever will they defend themselves? How about this:
Insurers’ “profits are not responsible for increased health care costs,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the industry’s trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans.
Oh. Then these enormous rate hikes aren’t going to help your bottom line.
Riiiight. Of course not. But the genius of this move is the typical corporate timing: piss people off that your political puppets are really afraid of and do it right before a BIG vote on something those people want that you desperately don't, thus proving to them that you plan on raising prices no matter what medical costs are. Brilliant!
You know, we may not have the muscle and the money to win this thing but our opponents clearly have the stupidity and runaway greed that can win it for us. If they keep this shit up (and they will) single payer could be on the table in no time.
No foolin.
Single-payer: One healthy guy left standing with some cash still in his wallet.
Posted by: vwclown | October 27, 2009 at 11:24 AM