Wellpoint, LLC, parent of Anthem/Blue Cross which announced a record single increase of customer’s premiums by up to 39%, just delivered a letter to The White House to explain the necessary marketplace reasons for their outrageous increase. They sent it by email along with the following music video which they claimed should answer everyone’s questions:
Of course they cooked figures and reasons for it but as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in response:
“It remains difficult to understand how a company that made $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone can justify massive increases that will leave consumers with nothing but bad options. “High healthcare costs alone cannot account for a premium increase that is 10 times higher than national health spending growth.”
That’s right. $2.7 billion in revenue in ONE QUARTER! And the respose to that is…raise premiums 39%.
I certainly hope Obama and Dems use this to hammer the GOP who want this rape of Americans to continue unabated. I hope they use it as ammunition with Dems in Congress to pass a public option via reconciliation.
Otherwise, if Americans vote Republican in November and 2012, they’re voluntarily cutting their own throats and getting treatment for that will not be pre-approved.
Okay, it all makes sense when you put on your handy new Corporate Mind-set, which is produced by Nintendo because American companies don’t actually make anything anymore and which will be mandated to be purchased by every American by the end of 2011, or they kill you.
The reason for the increase in premiums is because, you see, if the greed of corporations continues on its insidious trajectory (guess what? it will) for another few months or so, peoples’ heads are going to start exploding! People will be sitting watching TV, or reading the newspaper on the train to work, and they’ll get to the financial stories, and then their faces will turn red, their eyes will bulge to the size of cantaloupes, and their heads will explode! We’re talking hundreds of thousands of people here. How is a poor company with a measly three billion or so going to clean up after that?
So you see, it’s a classic win-win, a no-brainer actually (see? I bought my Mind-set early!). The company wins by profiting, and then creating a new malady that it can further profit from. That’s what “insurance” means, that they win no matter what. Look it up!
Actually, I see a long term version of the economic crash coming to fruition.
Just as the greed-at-all-costs mentality caused the crash of 2008, this continued ratcheting up of greed-at-all costs is mathematically unsustainable.
When the costs of insurance, education, gas, mortgages, food, etc. finally reach a level that is beyond affording by most Americans, the system will collapse.
But corporate thinking, when facing such an eventuality, is to accelerate their grabbing of money from Americans to get as much as they can before the collapse.
The banks do that with credit cards, when people reach a high level of debt, no matter how faithfully and on time they pay their debts, they jack up their rates and cut off use of the card.
The oil companies did that in 2008 when they saw the economic crisis coming, they jacked up their rates to $5/gallon to grab all they could before the crash.
In all these cases what this thinking does is in fact cause and hasten the crash that may not have come or be as severe if not for their actions.
It’s either them (corporations) or us, that’s what it’s coming down to.
And you know, there is a part of me (a small, vengeful part)that says: Good. Break down and start all over. It takes a real crisis to make any change happen here and so be it. The problem is the number of people suffering will be horrible. But maybe better than the slow slide into corporate slavery.
I guess the President can do no more than try to shame them. Incredible, makes me want to run over to WellPoint and ask for some money or offer to help them spend their billions. I have a friend from HS and she and I used to do crazy things like that all the time when we were young, just to prove a point. We got pants approved for everyday wear when we continued to wear them after a “winter cold” allowed them for a period of time. They suspended us and we came back again in pants. They gave us detention and we went in pants. After a month of back and forth, they dropped the pants issue as others joined our cause and every student could wear them. You see they had no law/dress code that was formal so not much they had to fight with and we knew it.
I babysat for two who were involved deeply in the anti-war movement in Berkeley and they educated me on the points of civil disobediance. They also always had a bowl on the coffee table and it did not have candy in it LOL
SueinCA, Please allow me to thank you for what you did with the pants. You’re not from Boulder, are you? I have vivid memories of going into Jr. High and as a 7th grader, being deeply impressed by a group of ninth grade girls who staged a protest by wearing pants to school and having a sit-in in front of the principal’s office. Because of their protest, we girls were then allowed to wear pants to school. I often think of those ninth grade girls with tremendous admiration. Somewhere, there are other girls thinking the same grateful thoughts about you and your friend!!!
No dear, California born and bred. It just seemed like such a stupid “unwritten” rule to us. You can wear them when cold but no other time? Good for my sisters in Boulder though.
I also was called in to Dr. Jones office with a boyfriend of mine who drove a van(Chevy) with no windows. He asked if we were planning an anti-war protest on campus because I was hanging out with (long=hair) Bill and because of the term paper I wrote in my junior year against the Vietnam War.
We laughed all the way home on that one. But it did win third place in statewide competition.
Once upon a time I made many calls about mint ice cream, when I’d finished my bowl…
I bet you did, my fav were Jack in the Box tacos or Foster Freeze french fries with mayo.
Reese’s peanut butter cups. Among everything else that wasn’t nailed down.
I saw that thing with that “Pole” on your YouTube page. Don’t you know, it’s Medicare and Medicaid that are dong this! They’re disrupting the market! 🙄
Leave it to someone who has always had the state provide his insurance to preach about how wonderful private insurance is and how evil single payer is.
They need that rate increase to cover the MILLION AND A HALF they are spending lobbying Washington.
It’s not like they want to spend OUR $$$ on Our Healthcare.
They are keeping the lobbyist employed.
There is no shame in the corporate world anymore. Where oh where is our Teddy?
Boy, do I miss Teddy.
These health insurance companies are criminal and should be treated as such.