Word: group
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...dying, from Gilead Sciences, a biotechnology outfit, to Quest Diagnostics, which administers blood and other laboratory tests, to Ventas, a real estate investment trust that manages hospitals and nursing homes. Another secular trend: more Americans seeking out higher education. Among the beneficiaries are for-profit institutions such as Apollo Group, ITT Educational Services and Strayer Education...
...losses by dropping sick customers and cherry-picking healthy ones is one way insurers currently stay profitable. But thanks to a provision inserted into the Senate health care bill at the last minute, the federal government may soon require insurers to "lose" 80% of premiums collected in the large group market and 85% in the individual and small group market. Insurers who don't operate at or above these thresholds would have to send rebates to customers. (MLRs are generally higher in the large group market because selling and administering one policy for many people at once requires much less...
Earlier this year Rockefeller - who is chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee - launched an investigation into MLRs. According to Rockefeller, in 2008, insurers in the individual market spent an average of 74% of premiums on health care, compared with 80% in the small group market and 84% in the large group market; some insurers cited in the final report spent as little as 66% of premiums on actual care. CIGNA, one of the insurance companies cited, says investigators erred in calculating the company's medical loss ratios. Where the report said CIGNA spent 87% of premiums...
Following the commerce committee investigation, one of the country's largest insurers - Aetna - admitted it had misreported its revenues in a way that overstated its MLR in the small group market. The company recently amended its filings to indicate that it had incorrectly categorized $4.9 billion of premiums; the revised figures changed its MLR average in the small group market from 82% to 79%, a significant change...
...health care debate has, ironically, intensified American contentment with their current health coverage. The July Battleground poll found that 84% of Americans were "satisfied" with their health care. The same poll in December found 91% of Americans satisfied with their health care. By contrast, 51% of the same group of people rated their economic situation as "just fair" or "poor," a clear signal that people care far more about the economy and jobs than they do about their co-pays and deductibles. In the Battleground poll, 29% of Americans said they feel insecure about their access to health care, compared...