WellPoint Agrees To Pay $11.8M to California Hospitals Over Health Insurance Policy Cancellations  Read more 

Sits on Wellpoint’s Board of Directors

Susan Bayh, wife of Senator Evan Bayh, sits on the board of directors of Wellpoint, a huge health insurance company. poputonian has an excellent run down of the history of Wellpoint.  Read more 

Let’s talk about corporate greed. It is worse than you thought. We know that these companies make money by collecting premiums and then denying care. The question is, money for who? Let’s look at their insider trades:
Cigna’s board of directors and chief corporate officers collectively dumped 129,499 shares of Cigna stock. I tried to add that up to what it would be in dollars, got as far as $17,342,224. That is in addition to their very high salary. How much health care could your municipality buy with $17 million dollars?  Read more 

Insurers don’t like to ’share’

The current mantra of those who support our private insurance model for health care is “shared responsibility.” Their goal is to ratchet up the amount that individuals will have to pay for medical costs, by buying insurance policies that have higher deductibles, larger co-payments, and higher costs for prescription drugs. What “shared responsibility” is about is maintaining insurance company profits.  Read more 

UnitedHealth CEO paid $13.1M in 2007

UnitedHealth Group Inc. CEO Stephen Hemsley received compensation valued at $13.1 million in 2007, down from the $15.5 million he got in 2006.

According to documents filed with the SEC, Hemsley received a base salary of $1.3 million in 2007, up from $1 million in 2006. He also got stock options awards valued at $8.1 million in 2007, less than the $11.3 million he got in 2006.

His compensation also included $3.6 million in cash incentives, up from $2.8 in the previous year.  Read more 

Major insurance companies drop on sector woes

Although UnitedHealth Group reported a positive fourth quarter—including a 62% increase for its Ingenix database system business—the company’s stocks have since plummeted, partially because of an ongoing investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. On March 12, shares fell to a 52-week low, bottoming out near $36 after seeing prices as high as $60 in December 2007. …  Read more