Insurance industry continues to insist profits aren't worth attention, still spending 1 million per day of those profits on ads
Posted on March 11th, 2010 by Jason Rosenbaum in Profits Before People
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Last night on the PBS Newshour, AHIP - the insurance industry's main lobby group - debated for the first time someone who's for health care reform, Health Care for America Now's National Campaign Director Richard Kirsch.
The topic? The insurance industry's profits. AHIP continued to insist its profits were only a "small piece of the pie" when it comes to health care costs, and to deflect blame elsewhere. As you can see, the arguments were demolished. Check out the video:
Fact is, insurance companies are making record profits while the rest of the country is working its way out of the recession. They are increasing their rates two and a half times faster than medical inflation. And all the while they're cutting millions of people from their rolls. Put simply, they are gouging the customers they do have, and dropping the ones they can't make a profit on.
Meanwhile, the industry is spending over a million per day through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on ads to kill reform. And every single one of those dollars came from those seemingly unimportant profits.
The annual reports of these insurance companies would be the most authentic and speak the loudest.
Richard Kirsh is right on the ball by pointing out the return on equity (ROE) in the primary sources - the annual report, with the fact that these companies had announced to shareholders that they'll rate hike premium and kick out more people who need insurance most. But the AHIP, Mike Tuffins, tries to detour aways from the fact and shifts focus to talk about ranking in Fortune - third party sources. Why?? He just cannot answer the simple question that the insurance companies had already explicitly announced: THEY ARE IN A BUSINESS OF PROFITABILITY AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN LIVES!!!
Why did I hear nothing on my local newscasts about the rally FOR insurance reform that happend in our nations capital this week. We hear when a handful of TEABAGGERS show up for asomething/anything but nothing at all about the rally. I say that the myth of liberal media is just that and should be exposed. In truth the media is conservative/protective of big corporations/and far right. Think the news announcers are afraid of loosing their jobs if they talk about all the poeple FOR reform?…they will talk constantly about the Lindsey Lohen milk ad , Tiger Woods,and go into detail about other celebs personal lives, run a long expose of someone in Virgina who happens to hoard things. These things dont affect our lives