Tag: health care reform (Page 2 of 4)

Anyone wondering how the health insurance companies have been increasing their profits at such a rapid rate should read this recent article from BusinessWeek. It appears that large health insurers completely dominate the market in many states.

The insurance industry is up in arms over congressional proposals to create a publicly financed competitor in an effort to bring down health-care costs. That may be because it doesn’t have to face much in the way of competition now: Most regions of the U.S. are dominated by just one or two health insurers.

Each year the American Medical Assn. (AMA) surveys the commercial health-insurance landscape and finds little if any competition. Its latest report says that, out of 314 metropolitan markets, 94% are controlled by one or two companies, or fewer. In 15 states, one insurer has 50% or more of the entire market.

Such market concentration has become a potent argument for supporters of a public insurer, President Barack Obama among them. With no need to generate profits, a public plan could offer lower premiums, thus bringing competitive pressure to bear on the private insurers to do the same.

Ezra Klein makes a similar point in the Washington Post.

In the modern health-care system, there is no higher power than the insurance market. And the insurers who populate that market have grown all the stronger. The Justice Department judges an industry “highly concentrated” if a single company controls more than 42 percent of the market. By that definition, 94 percent of statewide insurance markets are highly concentrated. A recent study by the advocacy organization Health Care for America Now showed that in Indiana, WellPoint controls 60 percent of the insurance market; in Iowa, Wellmark accounts for 71 percent; and in Alabama, Blue Cross/Blue Shield holds 83 percent. In the past 13 years, there have been more than 400 corporate mergers involving health insurers.

Economics textbooks tell us that concentrated markets reduce the competitive behavior that benefits consumers and lead to outsize profits for the dominant firms. Predictably, health-care premiums shot up more than 90 percent between 2000 and 2007, while the profits of the 10 largest insurers increased 428 percent over the same period.

We have a system that is not sustainable. This isn’t capitalism – instead we have several large insurance companies practically stealing money from American taxpayers.

Right now, President Obama is trying hard to get a bill with the help of all the major players, including the insurance companies. Therefore we’ve seen him go after costs and premiums, but he has not taken on the insurance companies in a direct manner.

If the current effort at reform fails or stalls, expect to see a full-throttled attack against these companies that informs the American people just how much money they are making and the tactics they are using to deny coverage to pad profits.