Aetna CEO paid $18.2 million in 2003

This explains where all the money is going doesn't it. It is certainly not going to healthcare. Recently I tried repeatedly to post an article from Post-Gazette that said all the recent preminum increases had nothing to do with health care cost increases. Instead this article said they were directly related to attempts to increase profits. It also said that employees were being asked to contribute more an more to their healthcare benefits for same reason. Sadly, it is the only link from Post-Gazette that I ever encountered that refused to work.

I have posted a couple over the last year - Humana routinely posts record profits, and the press release says that these are due to increased "cost sharing" (higher premiums) and fewer payouts (I can't remember the term now, something like medical loss). It burns me up - start looking at hospital CEO salary packages, too. Why aren't people up in arms? And we haven't even begun to talk about drug companies...

:angryfire :angryfire

can't even go there.....this is precisely the thing that "gets my dander up" - ms. grey....old nursing instructor

:angryfire :angryfire :angryfire


Yet this SAME COMPANY refused to pay for a Level II ultrasound during my last pregnancy unless there was a "valid medical reason" to do so! How about I'd like to make sure my baby is okay and be able to plan for delivery and life afterwards if she wasn't!

UNBELIEVEABLE!!!!


Makes me sick....I'm sure HE can get adequate healthcare, and doesn't have to worry about referrals, or how he's going to pay for orthodontics, etc etc

Great, now I'm going to be pi**ed off all day!

Jennifer

I recently read that UPMC paid big dividend to it's bond holders. That is the same health care orginization that routinely understaffs and has mediocre pay and benefits.

Almost all the hospitals in the NE Pa. Lehigh Valley area will no longer accept this insurance at all. My dentist just dropped it. They have been increasing everything steadily for the past 4 years or so. I myself only kept it b/c it was one of the few that even offered a small ammount of coverage for dental & now just after open season (the only time I can switch my health insurance) my dentist stopped accepting it. :angryfire I am dropping this as soon as open season hits again in November.

That's one of the reasons I no longer work for Aetna.

I believe, after studying this and other similar situations for many years, that fault lies with capitalism's insatiable appetite for profit at any cost. In the capitalist's profit-motivated equation, workers and consumers alike are considered so much grist for the mill. The trend is increasingly in this direction, what with corporate greed and profit being seen as acceptable variants of human behavior. Too soo, I fear, we will learn the folly of it all.

Aren't the premiums paid for healthcare?

Do any of these people care for patients?

What DO they contribute?