Not Glad I Metcha, Aetna

Sam Stein continues his excellent reporting on the major players in health care reform with this story on insurance giant Aetna forcing some 600,000 insured to drop coverage to "preserve profits":

Health insurance giant Aetna is planning to force up to 650,000 clients to drop their coverage next year as it seeks to raise additional revenue to meet profit expectations.

In a third-quarter earnings conference call in late October, officials at Aetna announced that in an effort to improve on a less-than-anticipated profit margin in 2009, they would be raising prices on their consumers in 2010. The insurance giant predicted that the company would subsequently lose between 300,000 and 350,000 members next year from its national account as well as another 300,000 from smaller group accounts.

"The pricing we put in place for 2009 turned out to not really be what we needed to achieve the results and margins that we had historically been delivering," said chairman and CEO Ron Williams. "We view 2010 as a repositioning year, a year that does not fully reflect the earnings potential of our business. Our pricing actions should have a noticeable effect beginning in the first quarter of 2010, with additional financial impact realized during the remaining three quarters of the year."

Aetna's decision to downsize the number of clients in favor of higher premiums is, as one industry analyst told American Medical News, a "pretty candid" admission. It also reflects the major concerns offered by health care reform proponents and supporters of a public option for insurance coverage, who insist that the private health insurance industry is too consumed with the bottom line. A government-run plan would operate solely off its members' premiums.

The bottom line of our health care system being a free market system, insurers are in business to make profits, not to pay for health care.  Once you introduce profit motive into health care, as I've said before, you already have the nightmare scenario health care opponents are fearmongering about.  Rationing, death panels, bureaucrats making health decisions for you...that's already being done by health insurance companies like Aetna.

A public option that provides basic health guarantees with a system like Canada's where you can get additional private insurance is the best way to go, and it's a system that tens of millions of Americans already have:  it's called Medicare.

Why can't we do that all of America?