A question about Health Care insurance and Unions.

There are sometimes things that do not make sense to me.

Health care insurance companies make money by insuring people. Whether they gouge them and deny claims to get a bigger profit per person doesnt change that basic fact of their business model.

Unions get benefits and better pay for their members. One of the key benefits that they fight for is Health care insurance. One of the key things that is getting slammed in the current anti-worker environment of the US is Health care insurance for employee's.

Think about it. If, say, Walmart, went union and demanded benefits including Health care insurance, how much profit would United health care, to pick one, make off of that deal.

It seems to me that we would be seeing collaboration between these two groups. HCI's should see more business if union membership and power grows. and we know that the HCI's have money to throw at the political process. Look at how they gummed up the works on the HCR bill, taking public option off the table, with universal coverage not even a thought in the heads of policy makers. So why are the HCI's not boosting unions in the face of the current Republican attacks?

Minimum wage?
Workplace safety?
Unemployment benefits?
Maternity leave?
Sick leave?
Vacations?

Which of these unduly hinder "jobs"?

Insurance companies do not make money by insuring people. They make money by enrolling people they never have to pay claims on.

You got it backward. It is not that they make more by gouging and denying claims - it is that they make LESS by paying claims. The perfect enrollee is someone who pays in all his life and then dies suddenly without ever filing a claim.

Unions may fight for health insurance for their members (and non-members who benefit from their efforts) but they also have a unified voice for those members - if the insuance company screws them, they might turn to a union rep for help, and if the rep sees a pattern of abuse of his members by the ins. co. he might turn the union's attention on them. Insurance companies want to deal with millions of powerless individuals, not with a well-funded political organization.

Health insurance companies are, first and foremost, corporations. They are on the side of the owners, not the workers.

Unlike us non-union employees who go to their evaluation and pretty much have to take what is offered unions have the entire (or part of it) workforce as a bargaining chip...give them some of what they want or your business can be shut down tomorrow.

With healthcare they have a package of policies to sell to the insurance companies. Obviously they get a better deal.

I'm not arguing with you.

On top of what you said insurance companies also underwrite every policy. It is almost impossible for them to lose money. AIG is not an exception it is a whole other thing. Notice that when and entire region gets wiped out (Katrina) not one insurance company was even close to in trouble. Some of that was as you say because they denied benefits (flooding vs. hurricane and State Farm getting busted) but mostly because they had underwritten every policy. Sometimes re-insuring the policies, they buy insurance on their insurance.

The nightmare customer for life insurance companies is the one who makes one payment and then drops dead....well not really a nightmare they already have the policy underwritten.

but what is one of the first of the once common benefits slipping away? What employer will be offering health insurance once workers rights slip fully away? Individual workers by and large do not have the cash to buy independent health care, and as company power waxes and union/worker power wanes, that trend will continue.

Granted the whole health care reform thing may, if democrats keep it alive, changes that paradigm somewhat, but aside from that, when only the very rich are able to afford health care and companies do not offer it as a benefit for anyone, where will the insurance companies be?

Basically, if there are no enrollee's, there are no profits. And if slip completely back into the robber baron days, there will be no enrollee's.


Similarly, the insurance companies have to be a bit nervous about the medicare thing. There is a reason that they don't insure that group to begin with. If it all gets dumped on them, voucher or no, they will have enrollee's who are virtually guaranteed to demand services.

you are talking about corporations, not businesses. They are structurally incapable of thinking beyond the end of the fiscal year - everything is decided on the cost analysis for the next quarter.

Even if by their own actions they destroy the foundations of their own industry, they will do it so long as they show better quarterly profits in the immediate future in doing so.

They are NOT in the health care business. They have no interest in health care. Their only job is to provide returns for the stockholders.

Just as the financial industry destroyed itself with the mortgage default swaps, it was more important to record high profits for the stockholders than work with a lower-profit, sustainable business model.