I don’t understand how business works.
I do know how to write moronic letters.
Lets start with three facts:
- an insurance company spent $9.5 lobbying
- the CEO of that company earned $10 million
- the same company raised rates 39% on those it insured in California
The letter writer, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, bitched to its CEO:
Your company’s strong financial position makes these rate increases even more difficult to understand. As you know, your parent company, WellPoint Incorporated, has seen its profits soar, earning $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone.
Highlighting that she is a complete moron lacking, like most Obama administration members, any understanding of business and the purpose of profit.
Ms. Sebelius, profits are not earned to reward customers. Profits are earned to reward shareholders. If more Obama administration members understood this FUNDAMENTAL principal of business they might actually craft “jobs” bills that would help jobs, or at least not hurt them.
Insurance companies that do not rate customer pools based on their risks do not remain insurance companies for long. Instead, they end up like AIG, Freddie Mac, and other government bailed out failures. Companies that waste profits do not remain profitable long, nor do their shareholders value them.
Anthem Blue Cross should be congratulated on its performance, not chastised. Its customers can choose to punish the company if they don’t like the new prices and the Department of HHS has no business threatening a private company.
As to the writer of this “news report”… he exemplifies the liberal bias of the modern journalist.