UnitedHealthcare

Why does your health insurance cost so much?

Sat, 12/27/2008 - 11:04pm — DCblogger

Data from the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy show that:

1. The top seven U.S. health insurers earned a combined $10 billion dollars - nearly triple their profits of 5 years earlier (Wall Street Journal, August 2006).

2. In 2004 top executives of the 11 largest health insurers made a combined $85 million per year in one year (Weiss Reports).

3. The 20 largest HMOs in the U.S. made $10.8 billion in profits in the fiscal year 2005. 12 top HMO executives pocketed $222.6 million in direct compensation in the fiscal year 2005.

Read more…

Help Corrente ...

... keep the heat on!

Subscribe to make a monthly payment and keep the hamsters who keep the mighty servers turning in kibble.

No PayPal Account required! Thank you!

Search

Today in Health Care Reform

Recent blog posts

If this sack of *&%$!
6 min 46 sec ago
Now listen, you douchebags,
13 min 19 sec ago
I'm sure if you look back
59 min 39 sec ago
Bottom line
1 hour 3 min ago
All part of the....
1 hour 23 min ago
While America circles the drain....
1 hour 24 min ago
Fair enough...
1 hour 42 min ago
While I have been very "Bah,
2 hours 2 min ago
Isn't Thanksgiving..
2 hours 28 min ago
In terms of outcomes and behaviors...
2 hours 34 min ago

I support Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Per capita health care spending (2007):

United States: $7290
Switzerland: $4417
France: $3601
United Kingdom: $2992
Average of OECD developed nations: $2964
Italy: $2686
Japan: $2581

-- Bob Somerby

The text of HR676 (Medicare For All) as PDF (30 pages). The FAQ. Compare HR3200 with HR676.

Medicare for All would save $350 billion a year (study in New England Journal of Medicine).

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program*." -- Bill Moyers.

* Medicare For All.

Random Links

[Advertising]

Contact lambert_strether [dot] corrente [at] yahoo [dot] com (lambert strether) for all your pony needs. Overt and covert displays of realism ("cynicism") available at customer option.

Chat box

23:30:36 hipparchia and to you too!
11:47:14 lambert Happy Thanksgiving in chat, too!
18:12:59 lambert Simple answers to simple questions: Yes.
18:00:47 BDBlue That's true on healthcare, but I was talking about the Fed bill. When the WH surrogates try to water it down, will the blogs fall in line?
16:32:33 lambert They'll pass something, anything. They need to declare victory.
15:40:03 BDBlue Re VL's post on the A-list, it will be interesting to watch the discussion of the bill on the blogs as the WH inevitably tries to kill it via various surrogates. Will we see the veal pen in action? And I agree this bill is potentially huge.
13:36:52 lambert Agree on Ron Paul and the Fed.
13:23:52 brucedixon interesting.... Glen tells me that neither the fake "jobs summit" nor the familiar wailing of conyers about his being disappointed with the prez are the big story. the most important thing happening in DC right now is the Ron Paul bill which wd require the Fed to be audited.
13:57:03 brucedixon I think my colleague Glen Ford is writing on it this week in BAR so I will just co-sign whatever he says.
22:03:36 Valley Girl I'd sure like Bruce Dixon's take on the Conyers comments. Just emailed him.
21:03:43 lambert Thanks, Jeff.
18:16:03 Jeff W lambert, I wrote to NOW about that Elizabeth Warren video not playing and got a response of sorts back, which I sent to you as a private PM. Just FYI.
02:28:28 hipparchia the first thing they told us my volunteer training: humans are natural born rescuers.
00:18:34 lambert One more study... [url]
23:57:37 lambert Joe Bageant is god. [url]
01:00:54 lambert The actuary was a whistleblower under Bush, too. [url]
00:47:48 hipparchia that's ok, jason stands ready to help smear the actuary quoted in that wapo article [url]
23:16:16 lambert Elders under the bus on Medicare, naturally. [url]
20:11:01 lambert 19:49:09 +100

Senior fellows of The Mighty Corrente Building

Leah (CA), Lambert (PA/ME), RDF (??), Sarah (TX), BDBlue (DC), Hipparchia (FL), MsExPat (NY).

Corresponding fellows

danps.

Correspondents

Health care reform: DCBlogger.

Fellows emeritus

mjs, Riggsveda, Tresy, Tom, hekebolos, chicagodyke, shystee, and Xenophon, Vastleft (MA).

Subscribe to Corrente feeds today!

Front page

leah

lambert

RDF

mjs

Sarah

Random term

Gaslight

A form of psychological abuse characterized by persistent denials of fact which, over time, have the effect of causing the victim to become anxious, confused and progressively less able to trust his or her memory and perception. From the 1944 movie gaslight with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman.

Corrente