Labor & Employment Law

Insurers Get Fat Pay Hikes While Workers Skip Treatment

By James Parks

While more and more working Americans can’t afford health care, big insurance CEOs are getting fat pay increases?and raising health insurance premiums.

Between 2007 and 2009, more than 25 percent of Americans reduced their use of health care?two to five times the rate than in Britain, Canada, France and Germany, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Here’s one big reason why: Nearly 15 percent of Americans are uninsured, while the other countries have near-universal coverage. Read the report, ?The Economic Crisis and Medical Care Usage,? here.  

Yet, while Americans are forced to cut back on health care, the insurance companies are raising premiums and using the money to lavish exorbitant salaries on CEOs and are paying huge fees to lobbyists to convince regulators to soften the rules  so that they can make even more money.

CEOs of the nation?s health care companies made nearly $1 billion last year?enough to pay for every resident of Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis combined to go to their doctor for an office visit, according to a report by Health Care for America Now (HCAN).

Since 2007, the insurance industry has spent at least $769 million to lobby policymakers and elected officials to influence health care legislation and regulation. Now its training its sights on the state regulators who are considering important rules setting minimum levels of insurance company spending on patient care. The new rules could rein in profits, CEO pay, lobbying costs and administrative expenses. 

So when more than 1,000 lobbyists and health care executives swarmed all over the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) meeting in Seattle last weekend, some 150 activists from the  Washington State HCAN and their supporters fought back.

They demonstrated outside and then went inside the conference center to deliver ?lobbyist disinfectant kits?  to the regulators so they could defend themselves against  the lobbyists.  

The kits included face masks to prevent the inhalation of lobbists? airborne lies, hand sanitizer for frequent clean ups and deodorant soap for anyone whose encounters with these enablers of corporate greed felt like they needed a shower. They even set up a triage center at the picket line to treat those most heavily exposed to lobbyists? dirty tricks.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on August 17, 2010 (boomark / email).