Aetna Forcing 600,000-Plus To Lose Coverage In Effort To Raise Profits

Aetna Forcing 600,000-Plus To Lose Coverage In Effort To Raise Profits

www.huffingtonpost.com

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

(visit the link for the full news article)

This just amazes me!

Even though Aetna DID in fact make a profit in 2009, it wasn't as much as they ANTICIPATED, so now they are going to raise their rates in 2010 AND drop 650,000 people who they insure (who will probably be the people who need the insurance the most).

"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,"

Don't these people realize what this countries economy is like right now? Hardly anybody is making what they "had historically been" making!

Aetna actually made a profit in 2009 but not at levels that it anticipated.

Money hungry CEO's couldn't get their ANTICIPATED bonuses I guess, so changes had to be made to ensure their millions in bonuses!

www.huffingtonpost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 12/4/2009 by Keyhole]

The best response would be for healthy people to dump the Aetna coverage when they do this.

If every relative of every preson they force off changes coverage, too, Aetna might be losing significantly more than what they project.

Oh!

And then there's this tid bit in the article, ...

Aetna Forcing 600,000-Plus To Lose Coverage In Effort To Raise Profits

It is also a major player in the current health care debate and inside Washington D.C. The insurance company has spent more than $2 million on lobbying just in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics

Now, why don't they think that this "little" decision of there's won't be used in the debate in D.C. against them by the "pro-government health care" crew?

Bad timing if you ask me.

[edit on 12/4/2009 by Keyhole]

Like no one saw this coming. Yet people will continue to vote for people that have nothing but the corporate interests in mind. Whoever had the bright idea to let health insurance companies run as a for profit industry should be severely beaten.