Report: Insurers Shifting Costs to Avoid Healthcare Laws- NOW LET'S KILL THE MANDATE, add Medicare,

[grahamhgreen]

or a Public Option, or move forward with single-payer.

"A Senate panel says some of the nation’s largest insurance companies have begun manipulating their accounting practices to avoid following the new healthcare reform laws. In a new report, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation says insurers are counting administrative costs as medical costs to avoid requirements on how every premium dollar is spent. The report cites the insurance giant WellPoint as having “‘reclassified’ more than half a billion dollars of administrative expenses as medical expenses.” The news comes as the insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has announced chief executive Stephen Hemsley took home almost $100 million in compensation from exercising stock options last year."

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/16/headlines#7

[DemocratSinceBirth]

1. That's An Idea

Let's blow up it up and start over again. The past eighteen months were practice.

[grahamhgreen]

20. Kill the punishing mandate ALONE, and leave the rest of the system - this ONLY hurts big crapsurance

and is good for the people!

[ixion]

2. This is precisely why an insurance mandate was a bad idea

and why I fought so vehemently against it.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. And how is the mandate related to accounting practice changes?

[ixion]

5. It's related to insurance companies, which is not health care

and it's these same companies who have shown quite clearly that they have no problem reconfiguring their business to skirt laws and bilk the consumer.

Surprise, surprise, that's exactly what they're doing, and now they've got a massive new revenue stream to work their magic on.

[havocmom]

10. EXACTLY!

Thank you.

[sinkingfeeling]

13. You do know that the mandate doesn't go into effect for 4 years and that almost all

Medicare recipients carry supplemental insurance or Medicare Advantage polices, via commercial insurance companies, at additional costs, to pay for what Medicare does not?

[grahamhgreen]

28. Actually 2 years 8 months.

‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.— If an applicable individual
fails to meet the requirement of subsection (a) for
or more months during any calendar year beginning
after 2013, then, except as provided in subsection (d),
there is hereby imposed a penalty with respect to the
individual in the amount determined under sub-
section (c). "

[Romulox]

26. The profit motive is the raison detre of the for profit insurance industry. Hope this helps. nt

[grahamhgreen]

29. Because you are mandating that we pay "insurers" trillions of dollars that they will use to cook

the cooks through legal, quasi-legal, and illegal means.

So the mandate helps them to steal from you, and then hide the money they've stolen.

[JuniperLea]

6. You don't see this as the insurance companies screwing themselves?

This was the obvious conclusion, their trickery. Notice it didn't go unnoticed. This thing won't be over for a couple of decades... and I believe it's panning out nicely. There was no way in hell that single payer could have been pushed through... this is clearly a work-around. That's how corporate America works. Fortunately, all eyes are on the insurance companies, and I can't help but believe this was part of the plan.

[grahamhgreen]

30. Only if we press for further reforms.

[JuniperLea]

34. I can't see us NOT pressing...

They are being so bold with this foolishness. I believe this was the plan... I truly do. They are committing slow suicide... I bet every loophole they find gets plugged up quickly. Agree with the bill or not, we always knew this was just the beginning.

[tridim]

4. Here's an idea. If you don't follow the law, you will not be allowed to sell insurance.

These companies are just as dumb as I assumed they were.

They just don't understand yet that consumers of their "product" are not at all loyal to their brand.

[JuniperLea]

8. Well said...

They really are falling for it, and they are going to wiggle around and expose themselves until they can no longer do business. You see, the death of The Insurance Industry (read: "blood money") had to come about by suicide... corporate America wouldn't allow it to be taken out back and shot, which is what single payer would have done. These greedy bastards are hanging themselves. They have been empowered and feel entitled, and it will be the end of them.

[proudohioan]

12. I sincerely hope that you're right!!!!

I've been thinking the same thing myself.

[Cal Carpenter]

19. You think these companies are dumb?

You think brand loyalty and consumer choice have anything to do with their ability to bank off the American taxpayers? These are some of the most powerful corporations in the world. Their influence on our government is vast.

Regulations = loopholes

or

regulations = unenforced

Same as it ever was. Same as it ever will be.

Environmental regulations, factory farms and slaughterhouses, tax rules, labor laws, consumer rights, it doesn't matter. For every one time some company gets busted and fined, there are a thousand other instances of it that go unnoticed. Yet whenever it happens to get in the news it is treated as shocking behavior.

This was inevitable. As the various parts of the bill go into effect, more and more of this type of story will appear. And virtually none of the 'weaknesses' of the bill will be addressed and corrected. This bill was set up to fail. Sure there will likely be one or two little 'victories' but they will be dwarfed by all the ways the people are getting screwed ()and paying for it too).

We'll get a few crumbs, as I say, and certain people will use them as an example of 'Look! They're improving it just like we said they would!' But for the vast majority of the people in need of health care, those crumbs won't mean shit.

[tridim]

21. Yes dumb. That's what happens when a historically unregulated industry becomes regulated.

They have no clue how to operate in a true free-market.

[dflprincess]

24. You're assuming the regulations will be enforced.

Maybe they'll do a better job with these that have been done with mine safety regulations. :sarcasm:

[tridim]

25. Ask Goldman Sachs.

You're assuming the law WON'T be enforced.

Why?

[dflprincess]

27. The "zealous" enforcement of work safety regulations leaves me skeptical

of how much follow through there will be.

We'll see just what happens in the Goldman Sachs case - if the company is allowed go on after these charges all they'll do is this part of the cost of doing business.

[grahamhgreen]

31. And note the GS case is not criminal, just civil. ie - a slap on the wrist, and profitable.

[Cleita]

7. At the very least we need the Medicare buy in bill HR4789 being promoted by Alan Grayson.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d111:4789:./lis...

He has 80 co-sponsors. I believe he needs 80 more. If your Congress person hasn't signed on, bug him. At least, with a mandate, this would give people a choice until we can get real universal health care going.

[grahamhgreen]

32. +1

[WeDidIt]

9. That's accounting fraud

The SEC can criminally cite the CEO and CFO of Wellpoint for doing that shit.

[havocmom]

11. And accounting fraud is S.O.P. for a lot of large corporations

if not whole industries.

Seems SEC will take a long time to get around to big insurance. They are just starting work on Goldman Sachs. There's plenty of time for insurance execs to pile up bonus bucks before the sheriff walks into THEIR saloon.

[WeDidIt]

15. And since Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley

CEO's can be held criminally liable for it.

Prison time is a possibility.

[Faryn Balyncd]

14. K and R

[fascisthunter]

16. Nail Em to the Wall

Eventually friends, we will have universal governmental coverage... it's just a matter of time.

[bvar22]

17. Of Course they CAN & WILL circumvent the new "regulations".

They wrote them.
Of course they will go around them.
After all, Its "The Uniquely American Solution."

If we had wanted "reform", we would have borrowed one of the 37 Up &Running "Universal Health Care Plans" from the civilized World, or simply expanded our own, Medicare.

No.
This whole charade was about delivering MANDATED "customers" to the For Profit Health Insurance Monopoly.
QED

"By their works, you will know them."


"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone

[tridim]

22. And this company is saying, "We don't need your stinking mandate!"

Because in the real world people will simply move their business to companies that follow the law and provide an inexpensive, quality, comprehensive product. That is exactly why this law was passed. It gives us the power of choice.

This is corporate suicide, teabagger style.

[Vinca]

18. Well knock me over with a feather. What a surprise!

:sarcasm:

[sabrina 1]

23. When you make a deal with the devil

you get screwed. Everyone who wasn't blinded by loyalty and partisanship, knew there was no way Insurance Corps were going to be adversely affected, profit-wise, by this bill.

As for those who think Congress can stop them, it will like trying to kill cockroaches, they pay millions to keep coming up with new ways to manipulate the laws and they have lots of experience with that.

All those who 'trusted' so much a bill that was a huge transfer of public funds to private insurance, were allowing loyalty to a party to blind them.

We should not have these corrupt, predatory middle-men involved in our health care system at all, but to hand the entire system over to them, with no public option, was insane. In fact most of them should have been prosecuted for criminal negligence in the deaths of thousands of Americans. A tragedy they don't care about. And we think we can deal with them??

Unless it is fixed quickly, and the only way to do that is to pass an amendment adding a Medicare buy-in, or some for of PO, they will get around every other law as long as the people have no choice, and are subject to the IRS if they do not buy from them. One day people will look back on this and wonder about how insane it was.

It is so insane, too, to think that Congress will have much control over them. Just as they paid to keep the PO out of the bill they will send their lobbyists back to DC to fight any attempt to 'fix' this bill. And anyone who thinks Congress will fight them, only has to look at how they caved in to them on this Insurance Bill.

[kenny blankenship]

33. and "Citizens United" means they have just begun to fuck us.