The Health Care Debate

[sleigh]

Anthem Blue Cross wants to raise rates for its California customers by up to 39%, which has caused (not surprisingly) an uproar. There was a House hearing on this yesterday. During the hearing, Angela Bray, who is president of Wellspring, which owns Anthem Blue Cross, said that ""Because of our role in health care, it is often insurers who have to deliver the bad news regarding spiraling health care costs." She blamed the increase (according to the article) on "...growing price tags for hospital care and pharmaceuticals. She also cited the ailing economy, which has caused many younger, healthier people to save money by dropping coverage, leaving her company covering an older, sicker population."

Representative Waxman, from California, asked Ms. Bray how much she received in yearly compensation from Wellspring -- which turns out to be around $10 million. In fact, Waxman pointed out, "39 Anthem company executives received salaries of $1 million or more." It also seems that Anthem/Wellspring spent $27 million in 2007 and 2008 on over a hundred "executive retreats" at resorts. Wellspring also reported a $2.7 billion profit in the fourth quarter of 2009.

This is the problem with for-profit healthcare. It becomes all about the corporate executives making outrageous salaries and the company making a profit. The welfare of their customers isn't even on their radar.

Comments

[kerinda.livejournal.com]

How much treatment would $27 million (not even counting the exorbitant executive pay, but just the "Executive retreats") pay for?

I'd like 30,000 of that a year for the next ten years to pay for my son's autism treatment, which those insurers "deny" as eligible treatments, thnx.

Wot?

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

That's a DFH argument if I've ever seen one!

Re: Wot?

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

DFH?

Re: Wot?

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

DFH = Dirting F**cking Hippy

Re: Wot?

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I guess that's me, all right. :-)

[greatsword.livejournal.com]

This is happening at the same time that the "cadillac tax" is being run through congress. You know, the one that argues that making the consumer more price concious will drive down the cost of healthcare?

This is the sort of irony that you can't get away with in fiction.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I wish they were the only ones. If I stick with my current plan, my premiums will go up 53% on April 1st. Cutting back to the plan with the lower overall costs (copays plus premiums) will reduce the increase...to 39%.

I don't have $7,200-$8,400 to pay for 12 months of premiums...or the additional thousand bucks I'll have to come up with in copays for appointments and the small procedure I'll need if my girly bits are continuing to behave like they did last year.

Even non-profits can spend huge amounts on executive compensation and retreats. In the meantime, the results are in (http://tinyurl.com/ycrzdrb) on a study of 900,000 Medicare recipients that ran from 2001-2006. Raising appointment copays less than $10 resulted in fewer doctor visits...and longer (more expensive) hospital stays.

The system is broken, attempts to repair it are backfiring, and meaningful reform remains beyond our collective ability to achieve.

I so want a single payer system, but I'm also aware that even that won't fix all the problems. It's too easy to point fingers -- that $2.7 billion 4th quarter profit that WellPoint (http://www.wellpoint.com/) (not Wellspring) reported sounds outrageous...until you look at the reported reason why -- the $4.7 billion sale of their NetRx business (http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20100128/NEWS/301289954#). Overall, health insurance company profits run at 3% according to several different sources I checked. Some of them even looked credible (http://tinyurl.com/yjffqna). (I assume anything the insurance companies report themselves comes with enough spin to warrant a trip to the emergency room.)

I don't mind a 3% profit nearly as much as I mind the entire infrastructure that puts insurance companies between patients and doctors. Much as I make my living off communicating about health care plans and other employee benefits, I abhor a system that ties health insurance to employment. It's a horrendous burden on the employers and leaves their employees at the whim of what medical plans the company decides to offer any given year. I also abhor the sheer complexity of the present system.

Yeah, count me among the DFHs.

Onward.