Once again I want to day how delighted I am to see HCAN join the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care in direct action against health insurance parasites.

So what did Cigna management do over its summer vacation? Well, on August 7 John Murabito dumped 13,500 shares of Cigna. On August 14 Peter Larson dumped 3,500 shares and dumped another 998 on August 31. On August 14 Edward Hanway dumped 183,693 shares. A lot of stock dumping on August 14, anyone with any ideas as to why that might have been?

While some of us spent September advocating for single payer, the board of directors of Wellpoint spent the month relieving themselves of the stock of a company that they apparently believe is poorly management.

On September 2 John Cannon dumped 15,380 shares of Wellpoint. That same day Lori Beer dumped 197 shares. The next day Larry Glasscock dumped 13,000 shares and another 13,000 shares on September 17. On the 9th of September, Sheila Burke dumped 9,920 shares, and another 3,200 on the 14th. Kenneth Goulet observed the anniversary of 9/11 by dumping 22,000 shares and dumped another 3,377 on the 14th. On the first of October, Martin Miller dumped 238 shares of Wellpoint.

Some breakthrough work on the impact hedge funds have had on the real economy was posted this evening on DailyKos by vets74: 1,000 Companies Attacked -> 1,200,000 Jobs Destroyed. 

These attacks combine corrupt MSM lie campaigns with market dumps of "naked shorts" and counterfeit "phantom stock."

. . . . Statistical sampling and employment data for the largest 1,000 attacked companies show they suffered 1,200,000 extra/excess layoffs.

Throw on a macroeconomic multiplier effect...  this gets past 3,000,000 jobs dropped overall.

 Read more…

In a guest post at Naked Capitalism:

The Obama Administration cannot energize their health care reform because the public demands reform in the financial sector, and quite frankly Obama has lost the 'high ground' of the reformer by his inability to free his administration from the growing taint of scandal and conflicts of interest.

And what of the FKDP?

William K. Wolfrum has a wonderful, moving essay about the national sickness that is for-profit health insurance.

All I can say is that I know there is someone driving a new car, paid for by my Mom’s suffering. And that others are living in big houses with obscene bank accounts, all paid for by the sick and dying. It is obscene and inhuman.

via Shakesville

Love the title:

Vampire Blue Cross/Blue Shield

Dear Editor:

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Over at ZeroHedge the big news seems to be something called flash orders, and apparently this high-frequency trading (is this anything like what they used to call "churning"?) has come under unfavorable scrutiny. Why?

I know we've seen The Big Picture visualize a trillion dollars, but here's another version in video form. From Mint:

To keep up to date on the bailout fuckery, check out ProPublica.

From the New York Times via Bloomberg:

Goldman Executive Named as Obama Adviser

By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published: July 18, 2009

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Cross posted from The Economic Populist.

Suggestions to solve the financial crises by basically shutting down most of Wall Street are always shouted down by howls of "How are companies going to raise money?" or "How are people going to invest in companies?"

Well, take a good, long look at this graph, which shows the percentage of capital expenditures by U.S. non-financial companies that was raised in U.S. financial markets from 1952 to 2006.

As we were discussing California's IOUs (which are a form of currency) earlier today, I present for your consideration something I happened to hear on the radio this afternoon:

Doug Rushkoff speaks with Arthur Brock of metacurrency.org, about "how we've mistaken money for currency, and how to recognize the real flows of value and power in the world around us." (Quote from the description of the show here.) There are archives of the show in MP3 form linked just above the playlist and comment section on this page (scroll down).

... because someone on it posted this succinct summary of what position our position is in:

This collapse was carefully engineered, and Obama is owned by the forces that set it in motion and are right now still governing the looting of the US economy. They are using TARP bail out funds to pay for legislation to give them MORE money and MORE power! This is an economic cytokine storm, a system so compromised and so turned against its own inherent regulatory mechanisms that it is utterly doomed.

The author is named Klempsi Ptwalazsnacht, and if I knew of a blog of his/her, I'd tell you to go to it -- but this was too good a meme to leave on FB, to be eventually forgotten.

Also a reminder that finance is the center of all things:

From Mike the Mad Biologist's post Will The Public Options Become Romneycare?

> There's no reason why healthcare must be privatized.

Of course there is [...]

Health care is one-sixth of the US economy. A third of that goes into the operational overhead of private insurance. That's 5% of the US GDP that would go away if a real public plan were available, and if you think the financial meltdown last year was bad just watch what happens when that river of money to Aetna and the rest dries up.

Hmm. I wonder why this song has been running through my head today?

Maybe if we'd single-pay

Life would lend us sunshiny days...

Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of transparency

Rep. Joe Barton (R, Texas), followed that response: "Doesn't it bother you that people are going to die because you insist on reviewing a policy somebody took out in good faith and forgot to tell you they had been treated for acne?"

Don Hamm, president and chief executive officer of Assurant Health, gave the only reply: "Yes, it does. We regret the necessity it has to occur even a single time."

Of course Joe Barton could do something about that by co-sponsoring HR 676.

Nurses National Movement has a diary at MyDD on the proposal to tax employee health benefits:

Ordering everyone to buy insurance, however, is a little messy. Especially in a deep recession when many are losing their employer coverage, premiums have soared four times faster than incomes in the past decade, and 62 percent of personal bankruptcies are now linked to medical bills.

 Read more…

Digby links this excellent reporting on the pay for parasites:

* United Health Group
CEO: William W McGuire
2005: 124.8 mil
5-year: 342 mil

* Forest Labs
CEO: Howard Solomon
2005: 92.1 mil
5-year: 295 mil

* Caremark Rx
CEO: Edwin M Crawford
2005: 77.9 mil
5-year: 93.6 mil

* Abbott Lab
CEO: Miles White
2005: 26.2 mil

Obama's Plan Would Cut Payments to Teaching Hospitals

Washington — Teaching hospitals’ fears were realized this past weekend, when President Obama said he would cut subsidies to hospitals that treat large numbers of the uninsured to help finance a sweeping expansion of the nation’s health-care system.

This Matters

For most businesses providing a good product is the way to make money. This isn’t as true for health insurance. The market “fails” in at least two ways in this industry. First, people don’t usually buy their own health insurance. It comes with their job. So the people who make the purchasing decision do not balance their own health against the cost. They balance someone else’s health. In a difficult and competitive business climate this results in the lowest bid having a huge advantage.

 Read more…

Rangel: Health-Care Reform Needs $600 Million in New Taxes and Will Cost $1 Trillion

Now more than ever it is necessary to write letters to the editor and alert the public that this money is not to expand access to health care, it is to subsidise the failing business model of health insurance parasites.

To understand the financial stakes involved in the battle over U.S. health-care reform, it’s useful to keep two numbers in mind: 50 million and 119 million.

The first number is the approximate total of Americans without health insurance, a new market that the private health insurance industry is salivating to get its hands on. The industry’s hope is that the government will mandate that those Americans sign up for private insurance and offer subsidies for those who can’t afford to pay the premiums.

 Read more…

Natasha Chart

Insurance companies make a lousy product that kills people and leaves Americans with lower life expectancies than people in 49 other countries. Their interests should stop mattering more than those of the people whose lives they wreck and whose entrepreneurial spirit they stifle.

Mother's Day present to me: new peat pots, fresh starting soil, clean water, seeds.
Six tomato pots, six corn (three each red and white), four okra, two peppers, three each zucchini and summer squash. Waiting for later? radishes and cilantro, maybe more squash. Should be ready to go out in ten days!
The backup plan? Since the mower is still broken (but the new washer is wonderful) I'll try using a hoe/shovel/tiller in the back yard, then a soaker hose, then seeds in the ground. It's mid-May, for catsakes. We should be through with cold until October.

Tracking Loans Through a Firm That Holds Millions

MERS, a tiny data-management company, claimed the right to foreclose, but would not explain how it came to possess the mortgage notes originally issued by banks. Judge Logan summoned a MERS lawyer to the Pinellas County courthouse and insisted that that fundamental question be answered before he permitted the drastic step of seizing someone’s home.

“You don’t think that’s reasonable?” the judge asked.

“I don’t,” the lawyer replied. “And in fact, not only do I think it’s not reasonable, often that’s going to be impossible.”

Medicare Advantage Sellers Trick Elderly Into Giving Up Benefits
Read it and then send the link on to whoever you think would be interested.