With the economy in recession and a growing number of Americans going without health insurance coverage, the big health insurers are still posting impressive profits. Wellpoint, the nation’s largest insurer by membership, “reported a 4% increase in profit for the second quarter that helped generate earnings of $1.6 billion since the beginning of the year – a 26% increase over the same period in 2009,″ and Aetna said its “second-quarter profits rose 42 percent, with a net income of $491 million, compared with $346.6 million for the same quarter last year.” Earlier this week, Health Care for American Now! (HCAN) released a report which found that CEOs from the 10 largest for-profit health insurance companies “collected pay of $228.1 million, up from $85.5 million in 2008.” As a group, insurance CEOs saw a “167 percent raise,” while “Americans saw their averages wages increase by about 2 percent.” Insurers are spending less on health care and seeing higher profits:
These numbers contradict insurers’ claim that stringent regulations would jeopardize the industry and, as the Wonk Room argues, should embolden regulators to impose tough consumer protections.
Previous in TP Politics
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.