Vol. 75/No. 22      June 6, 2011

In fact, a large part of the profit jump is because workers with insurance are increasingly putting off treatment because they can’t afford the rising co-payments and deductibles.

David Welch, a nurse in California, delayed going to a specialist even though he has a history of skin cancer, because his deductible is $4,000, cited the New York Times, in an article on this topic.

This is a win-win situation for the insurance capitalists. They fill their coffers with monthly premiums, but pay out less for health care.

Premiums are going up in part because federal and state regulators have already approved steep hikes to compensate insurance companies for the first stages of the health-care “reform” law, which will take full effect in 2014.

In early May Cigna, the fourth-largest health insurer in the United States, announced that its first quarter income jumped 52 percent, while health-care medical claims, its largest expense, fell 6 percent.  
 
Rising numbers of uninsured
While the insurance companies’ profits swell, the percentage of those without any coverage increased from 14.8 percent to 16.4 percent between 2008 and 2010, according to figures from Gallop-Healthways Well-Being Index.

Among the growing uninsured, ironically, are heath-care workers themselves. According to the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, 14 percent of hospital workers, 26 percent of workers in nursing homes, and 37 percent of those employed by home-care agencies are uninsured.

At Lakeview Christian Home in Carlsbad, New Mexico, only 87 out of 200 workers are on the insurance plan. “When we started charging $25 a month,” Joanna Knox, Lakeview’s chief executive, told the Times, “many employees dropped coverage.”

Another trend is the increasing number of doctors who refuse to see patients covered under Medicaid, the government insurance program for those with low income, because it is less lucrative for them. As a result, Medicaid patients often turn to emergency rooms for care, the one place required by law to provide treatment without money up front or assurance of payment—just a massive bill in the mail.

But hospital emergency rooms are shutting down.

A study published in the May Journal of the American Medical Association found that the number of hospitals with emergency departments in nonrural areas declined from 2,446 in 1990 to 1,779 in 2009. During the same period the number of emergency room visits increased by 35 percent.  
 
 
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