Aetna – Healthcare-NOW

Aetna CEO Gets 131% Pay Hike – Take Action!

Aetna’s CEO Mark Bertolini received a 131% pay hike, bringing in $30.7 million: that’s 877 times the $35k that the average worker makes in a year. Tell him that’s not okay. Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Dear [[First_Name]]: Fortune 500 health insurers increased compensation for their CEOs 25% in 2013 over 2012!…

Health Insurers Raise Some Rates by Double Digits

By Reed Abelson for the New York Times – Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers. Particularly vulnerable to the…

Anthem Blue Cross seeks to raise individual policyholders’ rates

By Chad Terhune for the Los Angeles Times – California’s largest for-profit health insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, is seeking to raise rates an average of 18% for more than 630,000 individual policyholders, drawing scrutiny from regulators and the ire of consumers already struggling with soaring premiums. Some Anthem customers may see rates rise as much…

One battle in the war against health-insurer insensitivity

By David Lazarus for the LA Times – It would be so easy for health insurers to avoid ill will if they’d just listen to what customers are saying and do their best to respond in a reasonable fashion. Unfortunately, that’s just not how the industry seems to be programmed. Kevin Roberts, 36, has been…

Aetna Builds Empire: One Denial at A Time

By Donna Smith – It’s a business. It’s big business, and it’s all about the money. When plans for Aetna to purchase Coventry Health for $5.7 billion surfaced this week, all I could think about is where people like me – Aetna’s insured – figure in the business models. I’m not a patient in their…

Investors in Health Care Seem to Bet on Incumbent

From the New York Times – Who is going to win the presidential election? You might want to ask Mark T. Bertolini. He just bet $5.7 billion on President Obama. Mr. Bertolini is the chief executive of Aetna, which on Monday agreed to acquire Coventry Health Care, a huge provider of Medicare and Medicaid programs.…

Single-Payer Health Care Is Coming To America-Are We Ready?

By Rick Ungar for Forbes – Speaking at a recent conference, Mark Bertolli, CEO and Chairman of Aetna Insurance, announced that the end is near for profit driven health insurance companies. “The system doesn’t work, it’s broke today. The end of insurance companies, the way we’ve run the business in the past, is here.” In…

The Insurers’ Real Agenda for Change

By Wendell Potter for the Huffington Post – The media had lots of health care news to obsess about last week. A federal judge ruled the health care reform law unconstitutional, and Senate Republicans tried in vain to repeal the law. But most of the press paid virtually no attention to a potentially much more…

For-Profit Insurers Leaning on Regulators to “Reform” Health Reform

By Wendell Potter for Huffington Post – The nation’s biggest insurers — not happy with provisions of the four-month-old health care reform law that would force many of them to spend more of the money they collect in premiums for their policyholders’ medical care — are pressuring regulators to disregard what members of Congress intended…

Insurers Set To Raise Prices, Walk Away From Consumers

By Sam Stein for the Huffington Post – The market concentration for health insurance is so monopolized in some areas that insurance companies are willing to raise prices and lose customers in an effort to improve their bottom line, a leading insurance broker told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday. In a conference call organized by…