According to Wendell Potter, quarterly earnings are out for the big-profit insurance companies, and they're rolling in the dough -- as usual:
CIGNA and Humana are scheduled to report earnings this week. The three companies that have already spoken -- UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna -- earned a combined $2.51 billion from April through the end of June, more than analysts expected. On a per share basis, their earnings were up more than 17 percent on average compared with the second quarter of 2010.
Those results were no anomaly. The big for-profit health insurers have been blowing analysts' expectations out of the water for several quarters in a row, even as the country struggles to recover from the recession and the number of Americans without coverage -- one out of every six of us -- continues to rise.
Based on their strong performance during the first half of this year, UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Aetna have all have raised their profit forecast for 2011. In other words, they expect to earn far more this year than last year and far more than even the most hopeful investors and analysts had anticipated.
Apparently, the bullsugar excuse that winter weather was keeping patients away from doctors -- something that the big-profit insurers pedaled in the winter -- has proven to be just that, bullsugar:
When it didn't, the bad winter weather was to blame. Insurance executives wanted us to believe that people were not getting the care they needed because it was colder and snowier than usual. They assured us that medical spending would jump again as soon as the weather improved and the ice and snow melted.
Surprise! It's August and people are still not going to the doctor or picking up their prescriptions or checking into the hospital as much as they usually do.
Well, the insurance companies have to care about people somewhat, right? Isn't that why they forced us to accept the individual mandate? So they could "cover everyone"?
Well, newsflash, insurance companies aren't in business to cover everyone, they're in business to make loads of money. Here's the smoking gun from an Aetna thug and Angela "I leave breast cancer patients to die" Braly:
Insurance industry executives are experts at talking in code, which makes it difficult to understand just how much they value profits over people. Occasionally, though, they slip up, as Aetna's chief financial officer, Joseph Zubretsky, did last Wednesday during his company's conference call with analysts.
Clearly concerned that investors might think Aetna was willing to grow by adding people to its rolls who might have substantial medical needs, Zubretsky disabused Wall Street of that notion.
"We would like to have both profit and growth, but if you have to choose between one or the other, you take margin and profit and you sacrifice the growth line," Zubretsky said.
Whether he knew it or not, he was channeling WellPoint CEO Angela Braly. In a 2008 conference call with financial analysts, Braly had to acknowledge that her company had spent more on medical care during the previous three months than she and Wall Street had expected.
In the future, she promised, "We will not sacrifice profitability for membership."
This thinking is why all other highly-developed countries have outlawed the sale of basic health insurance as a for-profit product.
Is it time for single payer yet?