This should come as no surprise to anyone. Anymore the business has become so complicated, consumers really have no idea what they get for their dollar, or should I say their life. We are still stuck with these old human bodies that for some reason just can't be commoditized and yet, this is how the insurance business continues to function. With increased health care costs, the pool to spread the expenses just doesn't seem to be large enough for any of them, thus we get increases.
There are many factors that enter into providing health care and there is no balance today with all the players, and thus we have the mess we are faced with today. Everybody wants to be paid, and rightly so, but at what level? This is going nowhere other than the fact to be a no win situation for all.
Employers are strapped and many are canceling contracts to provide health care for employees at this can mean the difference of whether or not a company makes a profit and can afford to stay in business. Pharma needs their money for research as well as Biotech and that market is like a runaway train as there are no guarantees with some of the new drugs being developed as seen with clinical trial failures, but there have also been some successes too, which are important and overshadow everything else when it comes to saving lives, or let me say it should. After all, what good is the technology if nobody can afford it? Maybe that is the million dollar question here. And what about foreign interests? There's a lot of that going on, just search the blog here and you will find many posts relative. The problem is nobody is investing in the American health care system to the extent to improve and create better health care, as it is all driven by profits.
When the folks want to make a buck, where do they go, where the money is, so if nobody is going to make a buck here in the US on healthcare, they move on to other ventures. If perhaps we had more folks and corporations truly working together instead of against each other, perhaps some of this could see the light of day somehow, but until then, we have just what you see today.
The old saying of "people do business with people they like" holds true, as well as needing a sense of value for money spent. BD
One giant health insurer that's certainly aware of the phenomenon is WellPoint, which has seen its profits drop 17% so far this year after underestimating how quickly health-care costs would rise. In an attempt to regain investors confidence, CEO Angela Braly has been boosting the monthly premiums that customers have to pay for WellPoints plans in some cases quite a bit. The result: In the first six months of the year, WellPoint lost 189,000 members in the business and individual plans that it insures, the WSJ reports this morning.
Other major insurers that have reported enrollment losses in employer plans since the first quarter include UnitedHealth Group, Health Net and Coventry Health Care.
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