Now there's no argument that health insurance companies still make truckloads of money even during the recession (see Huge profits for health insurers as Americans put off care - NYTimes, Executives at health insurance giants cash in as firms plan fee hikes - LA Times). Funny thing is, they still think they're vulnerable to competition, even though all the mergers of the health insurance industry in the past 20 years have left the market with on average just a couple of large insurers for any geographic area.
Well now these companies are ostensibly worried about the New York State Department of Financial Services' releasing their memos justifying steep premium increases, in the name of preserving competition. Apparently they each have "trade secrets" that they want to keep from other snooping insurance companies. That must mean they each think that their own trade secrets are better than the next insurance company's trade secrets.
Obviously, I don't think that's the case. They're much more worried about public outrage at their institutionalized practices of denying coverage and refusing to pay for care while hiking up already-exorbitant premiums again and again. “These documents, often speaking of concepts such as morbidity and anti-selection, could cause not only confusion, but also unnecessary alarm to the layman policyholder.” That's right, because the average person simply cannot understand why it's absolutely necessary for prices to be so high and coverage to be so low (and rightly so, I may add).
We have the freedom to be outraged and the right to know what these companies are doing with our money, what calculations they're making on our lives. Let's get angry, people.
Health insurers ask to keep rate increase data secret - NYTimes
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