I did a post this morning about the Tri-Care military contract and United Healthcare. I keep finding in my research that I do for blog content, more and more owned subsidiaries and this is something I think we should give some thought.
Health insurance companies are not the same as they were years ago and with analytics and technology created models for profit, I don't think we can ignore this. At any rate I cover the tech difficulties the company is having and the DOD giving them some extensions to clean up their act. In the midst of doing this post I found yet another subsidiary they own, one that makes a lot of money like the Tri-Care contract, and again the government is the client.
The question I raise here is kind of to the point about insurers being too big to fail and also with the up and coming insurance exchanges, are some of the insurers shining this on as they don't need the money? Again at stake here and the fact that they sued the DOD to get the Tri-Care contract, this LHI subsidiary and what they do for the military and VA is worth reading about as until I did this post, I had no idea they were yet one more of the truckloads of subsidiary companies United owns. Their subsidiaries are involved in all kinds of businesses as well from electronic medical records, clearinghouses, cheap hearing aids, they own a bank with a billions on deposit..you name it.
So with enough money coming in are some shining exchanges for participating and especially when the government is the big client too? While Sebelius and company at HHS is working hard to get state insurance exchanges established to help consumers, United was busy over at the DOD for their profit efforts with contracts.
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With the LHI subsidiary that works with disability claims for veterans and is busy trying to enroll more doctors to see and participate here along with their "big" events to where they do mass physicals, inoculations on big groups of military troops....well you get the idea and the fact that the company set up a subsidiary to pursue Tri-Care and other military contracts should cue you in a little. Right now with exchanges we see Blue Cross being very active as they don't have the big government military contracts and for the west where United sued to win, it put the former Tri-Care contractor, a subsidiary of Blue Cross right out of business. A lot of power here with government contracts.
It also appears that once the processing is done that the LHI subsidiary of United also has the capability to dump the medical information right into the chart of the patient with the VA? Don't hold me to that one as the context of the article seemed to indicate such as well as information from the LHI website.
So again, I suggest all pay attention to the actions for profits that take place with insurance company subsidiaries and what they do as by using names that are not in "name" connected to the corporate conglomerate, stuff happens and later companies find out there are in fact doing business with a huge conglomerate. Mergers and acquisitions cause a lot of this too as the VA for one example does a lot of business with Picis. Here's a couple back links and sometimes the subsidiary can be a bit of a daily chain with "subsidiary of, which is a subsidiary of, which is another subsidiary of"...you get the picture.
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So again a question worth asking when it comes to insurer participation with insurance exchanges...do they need the money or are they already set and don't want to mess around with them? In the United case it seems to have a huge government exposure here as they did business with the DOD for contracts while HHS kind of unknowingly sat on the sideline...why we need executives running department heads that can see the entire "big picture" as that makes instances like this a little more difficult to sweep under the rug...so the military appears to much more profitable than us on an exchange...billions in contracts...those in Congress are also blind I tend to believe and for the life of me I can't understand why they don't reinstate the Office of Technology Assessment to help them create better laws as this was there as non partisan to help educate the folks we elect and today they sure need it...I think about that every time the old abortion distraction comes up...it is just that, something those who are not educated in key areas seem to veer off to something they feel they can control and we all suffer.
I think it's one heck of an idea to get those guys and gals on the Hill educated as the world becomes more complex, irrational behavior will only tend to show the levels of digital illiteracy we are experiencing relating to making laws...sadly they don't get it. NSA discussion anyone?
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