I’m certain everyone has heard of Anthem’s 39% rate increase in health insurance, but did you realize raising rates is all the rage? Actually, if you’re one of the individually insured these rate hikes aren’t new at all. They’re simply part of individual health insurance.
At 11:30 a.m. today, Sebelius will release the report, obtained by TPMDC and titled “Insurance Companies Prosper, Families Suffer: Our Broken Health Insurance System.”
It finds that Anthem’s rate increase (now delayed until May) is “not unique” and that experts say premiums will keep rising.
The report quotes National Association of Insurance Commissioners officials predicting the nation will “see rate increases of 20, 25, 30 percent.”
“These massive increases are disturbing examples of the problems that make reforming our health insurance system more important than ever,” the report states.
Why these companies must be suffering financially. Or not…
Last year, as working families struggled with rising health care costs and a recession, the five largest health insurance companies – WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, Aetna, and Humana – took in combined profits of $12.2 billion, up 56 percent over 2008.
These health insurance companies’ profits grew even as nominal GDP decreased by 1 percent over this same time period.
And recent data show that the CEOs of America’s five largest insurers were each compensated up to $24 million in 2008.
Those are some really big profit numbers.
But it’s the timing of these rate hikes that confuses me and makes me think these companies have jumped the gun on returning to business as usual. You’d think they’d lay low until HCR was officially pronounced dead. This move has breathed new life into the patient, and strengthens – in tangible, immediate ways – what we’ve been saying all along, that the system is broken and cannot be sustained.
Something else interesting is happening in HCR. The Public Option has returned, and is gaining support.
So I’d like to take this moment to thank the Health Insurance Industry for simply being you.