Whats there to say except point well.

Dont’cha worry, Obama and the Democrats will fix it all, – or not. Besides, it all doesn’t matter anyway, – who would Democrats vote for if not for Democrats, right?

The alternative is for government to eliminate useless expense and force costs down.

i like the alternative of taking wellpoint out of the business of health insurance for all medically necessary healthcare. let them insure botox injections.

edit to add:

The number of persons covered continued to decline, down 1.5 million, 4.5% in the last year, largely from unemployment.

wow. thanks for this info!

world series rain delay so i think i’ll hang out here for a bit.

anyway. good post. FOX was running with a story recently- maybe it was an AP – that ins co. profits aren’t much so the D’s are picking on the wrong people

Yeah, there were reports about the per cent profit for the insurance cos. being about 3% to 4%. Some folks have tried to use that number and I do like to point out that they might be a bit better off and credible with the profit angle if the senior execs weren’t pulling down 7 and 8 figure salaries and bonuses. And as well, good accountants can hide a lot of things as write-offs, getting the “profit” number way down.

As revenge for being outed, Mrs. Bayh needs to get away from it all… in a new private jet… at claimants expense.

Birch should have a talk with his boy.

true

Selise, all of the companies are reporting lower enrollment from unemployment. UNH is down 1,715,000 policyholders over last year, a decline of 6.5%. Humana, Cigna and Aetna report next week.

“The number of persons covered continued to decline, down 1.5 million, 4.5% in the last year, largely from unemployment.”

1. Unemployment is likely to keep on rising for several more years, esp. since a double dip recession is almost guaranteed.
2. As unemployment rises, wages are going to fall or stagnate.
3. Due to the above, insurance premiums will continue to rise, turning the trend into a self perpetuating death spiral. The estimated $24,000 (?) by 2019 per family of 4 is likely to be an overly rosy estimate.

The whole exercise in congress is nothing more than an effort to socialize Insurance industry profits. Those who won’t be able to pay $25,000 per year will be subsidized by taxpayers? – all of them? Bullshit! CBO’s numbers are based on a healthy economy, – an economy which most americans are unlikely to experience in their lifetime.

1786 deja vu.

As always, one needs to distinguish between the interests of the shareholders
and the interests of management.
Shockingly, and in complete contradiction to the theories of the University of Chicago,
they sometimes diverge.

They are running two sets of books, so nothing doing, Fox.

That’s why I mention the ability of the companies to manage earnings. A small example, WellPoint has a bunch of CMOs, Alt-As and Subprimes. It hasn’t written them down much. This is from page 8 of the 10-Q:

At September 30, 2009, we owned $3,688.3 of mortgage-backed securities and $208.3 of asset-backed securities out of a total available-for-sale investment portfolio of $16,630.7. These securities included sub-prime and Alt-A securities with fair values of $120.4 and $366.1, respectively. These sub-prime and Alt-A securities had accumulated net unrealized losses of $31.5 and $57.8, respectively. The average credit rating of the sub-prime and Alt-A securities was “A” and “BBB”, respectively.

When they need to manage earnings, they can write these down some more.

Right. I put that together with that story right away (the FOX/ap(?))story about ins. co’s low profits.

um….. is anybody wants to have another Shays Rebellion I suggest they stop bullshitting about it and just go do it. See ya

bmaz is upstairs!
Torture Tape Destruction Accountability: How It Is Done

With premiums out of control and insurers losing customers by the millions, they get the government to force everyone to buy, whether we can afford to or not.

Pure evil genius.

If one thing has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt in the last year — by way of first the economic collapse and the government response and second the health care debate — it’s that compassionate and conservative don’t belong in the same sentence, let alone the same slogan.

Was it compassionate to allow hundreds of thousands to either lose their homes or be forced into ‘underwater’ mortgage conditions in order to comfort the comfortable? Of course not, but that’s how conservatism works.

Are the efforts to create a health care system that benefits the insurers and not their policyholders compassionate? No, nor are they fiscally responsible. They are just protecting profits before people.

So the next time someone tries to present themselves as a ‘compassionate conservative,’ point out that it’s oxymoronic, and laugh the silly bastard out of the room. Which is what they should have done with the last guy to use that fraudulent phrase.

Shays’ Rebellion:

Shays’ Rebellion was an armed uprising in central and western Massachusetts (mainly Springfield) from 1786 to 1787. The rebellion is named after Daniel Shays, a veteran of the American Revolution who led the rebels, known as “Shaysites” or “Regulators”. Most of Shays’s compatriots were poor farmers angered by what they felt to be crushing debt and taxes. Failure to repay such debts often resulted in imprisonment in debtor’s prisons or the claiming of property by the County.

Boston elites were mortified at this resistance. Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin commanded the legislature to “vindicate the insulted dignity of government.” Samuel Adams claimed that foreigners (“British emissaries”) were instigating treason among the commoners, and he helped draw up a Riot Act, and a resolution suspending habeas corpus. Adams proposed a new legal distinction: that rebellion in a republic, unlike in a monarchy, should be punished by execution.[6]

_____________

We need to pick up the spirit…~~~EDITED IN MODERATION~~~
~~~Please take the armed rebellion chatter elsewhere.~~~

Are not the Compassionate Democrats running the show?
Hasn’t VP Biden been a major supporter of the lousy Bankruptcy legislation?
Isn’t Barney Frank giving away the store to Wall Street?

am I missing something?

To the Moderator:

I am not coming at this from the right, nor do I suggest an armed uprising to be some kind of a solution. I am attempting to stay focused on the fact that our Government has been usurped by Wall Street and huge Corporate entities.

Thomas Jefferson, who was serving as an ambassador to France at the time, refused to be alarmed by Shays’s Rebellion. In a letter to a friend, he wrote that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”[12]
Ultimately, however, the uprising was the climax of a series of events of the 1780s that convinced a powerful group of Americans that the national government needed to be stronger so that it could create uniform economic policies and protect property owners from infringements on their rights by local majorities. Men like Charles Harding helped to spread concepts created during Shays’s Rebellion. These ideas stemmed from the fear that a private liberty, such as the secure enjoyment of property rights, could be threatened by public liberty- unrestrained power in the hands of the people. James Madison addressed this concept by stating that “Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.”[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion

triple wow! thanks again for the info!

After Shays’s Rebellion, General Henry Knox warned his former commander, George Washington, about the rebels: “They see the weakness of government; they feel at once their own poverty, compared to the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter in order to remedy the former. Their creed is that the property of the U.S. has been protected from the confiscations of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore should be the common property of all.”

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia for 1787 was called to deal with this problem, to set up “big government,” to protect the interests of merchants, slave-holders, land speculators, establish law and order, and avert future rebellions like that of Shays.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/BigGovernWhom_Zinn.html

Why does “increasing COBRA membership” increase the cost of care? “Higher expectations for the H1N1 flu…and inflation in the price of prescription drugs:” these I understand, but not increased COBRA membership.

I made no argument defending the Democrats.

“The Republicans are 95 percent corrupt and the Democrats are 75 percent corrupt. They are accepting money from the same corporations. And of course, that is going to corrupt you.”

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – Fascist America

“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party, which essentially is corporate America…and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt—until recently… and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”

— Gore Vidal –

Still, I agree with the late Molly Ivins’ comment that, “just when you think the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans, the latter will do something to prove you wrong.”

montanamaven’s diary is upstairs!
Liberals Need a 12 Step Program – We ask Taibbi What We Should Do Next

As much as I love Molly (bless her), and agree with her sentiment, – it gives me no comfort. The RFK quote is even more discouraging, in as much as it brings into stark relief the absurdity of relying on the 2 party system to work for the ‘farcical’ four quintiles of the population.

“The farcical 4/5ths” — aka the mythical little people.

some are talking about a third party movement. i think thats the best way to lose whatever influence we might be gaining by holding the line. electing real liberals in whatever party we find them is the best answer, at the local state and federal levels.