Labor & Employment Law

Health Care Giants Spent $86 Million in Effort to Kill Reform

By James Parks

We reported that Big Insurance funneled millions of dollars to the Chamber of Commerce to fight health care reform and millions more to try and water down the law once it was passed. Now Bloomberg Business News reporter Drew Armstrong has put a price tag on the effort to kill the bill. In an article earlier this week, Armstrong says tax records show big health insurers last year gave the Chamber $86.2 million that was used to oppose the health care overhaul law.

The Chamber is not required to disclose its donors, but unnamed sources told Bloomberg that the money came from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), an industry trade group that represents companies like Cigna and UnitedHealth Group. AHIP?s donation accounted for 40 percent of all the money the Chamber received in 2009.

The money paid for advertisements, polling and grass roots events to drum up opposition to the bill that?s projected to provide coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, a Chamber spokesman told Armstrong.

But the spending hasn?t stopped. Opponents of the overhaul have spent $108 million since then to advertise against it, the New York Times recently reported?six times more than supporters have spent.

Meanwhile, the big insurers continue to make outrageous profits. Six of the nation?s biggest private health insurance companies saw their profits increase by 22 percent over last year in the quarter that ended in September, according to a new analysis by Health Care for America Now (HCAN).

HCAN says the  $3.4 billion in 2010 third-quarter profits for WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Aetna Inc., Humana Inc., Cigna Corp. and Coventry Health Care Inc. is tied to the companies spending a ?smaller share of their premiums on medical care, purging unprofitable members and burdening consumers with higher cost-sharing limits.?

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on November 19, 2010 (boomark / email).