HEALTH CARE SQUEEZE

As the number of Americans without access to health care rapidly approaches the 25% mark, how are those who are lucky enough to have insurance faring?

From ZNet:

Now we can see why the big health care/insurer corporations have raised premiums so rapidly during the 2000-2003 slump. As returns on many investments began to decline with the end of the 1990s boom, insurers were able to offset this decline in their own income ledgers by sharply raising premiums.

Under cover of raising premiums to keep up with escalating medical costs, they got away with raising premiums faster than the rise in costs. The result was a run of exceptionally profitable years for health insurers.

It wasn't always so. In the mid-1990s, profitability was low for health insurers, despite the booming economy, due to the false expectation that cost-cutting imposed by HMOs and by mergers would end health care inflation. To reach higher levels of profitability called for double-digit premium increases.

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