Don't call it Healthcare, call it Wealthcare.
"Wealthcare" is defined as taking care of Stephen J. Hemsley, a job being done top notch, by who else but Stephen J. Hemsley. With a little help from his friends.
And with fiscal help from the health insurance buying public. It is like welfare transfer payments to him. Humongo welfare. From you to him. Because, I guess, he presently does not have enough. Whatever his motivations, "wants more" is his bio. Mr. Minnesota Nice. You can see it in his eyes, in his photo.
COUNTDOWN special report: United HealthGroup.
This site has the video posted, with oped commentary. (Commentary really is not needed, the segment [viewed or read in transcript form] speaks for itself.)
MSNBC has posted the online transcript for the August 25, COUNTDOWN, here, and it is the source for the following selective excerpting, starting with Olbermann's lead-in teaser:
Health care: The Republican logic elevator no longer goes all the way up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY ®, IOWA: I oppose the public option because our
one of the principles that we follow is we want people to have choice.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: Option, choice—never mind.
That's included because our own Sixth District Rep. Michele Bachmann has engaged in exactly the same, oppose-the-public-option because we-want-people-to-have-choice Mad Hatter Tea Party rhetoric. Most recently in Lake Elmo, this past week she pulled that act. Her website, here, says she's sponsoring, "bipartisan legislation, H.R. 636, the Health Care Freedom of Choice Act," to "give all Americans the freedom to purchase the health plan of their choice, to pick their preferred doctors and to make their own medical decisions." However, also on her website, here this time, she says Congressional effort must be opposed "whether it entails a 'public option' or 'co-op,' a government take over of our health care system is simply unacceptable," her argument being, in large part that government could not do the job and there "are too few shining examples of profitable and efficient government enterprise." Yet, reporting here, indicates she, "in her floor speech, issued a litany of talking points against the public option, and said that the public option would be far cheaper than private insurance." That reporting links to Congressional Record text, and excerpts Bachmann, "Approximately 114 million Americans are expected to leave private health insurance. Why? Their employers will drop the insurance because the taxpayer-subsidized plan will be 30 to 40 percent cheaper. This action will collapse the private health insurance market, and then the Federal Government will own the health provider game." [The implication being the private health insurance market participants and not health providers presently "own" the health provider "game" and I confess to being unsure what the woman is talking about, mixing provider and insurer terminology that way.]
There you have it. Oral Roberts Law School graduate Bachmann claiming the government cannot run anything efficiently, we should oppose "public option" because it would drive private insurance out of the market because it would be cheaper, and that's bad because we should have a choice [but don't tell her you'd choose a cheaper public option since that would blow her circuits as well as torpedo her circuitous so-called "logic"]. Moreover, the GOP wants to be taken seriously. To not be viewed as laughably irrelevant. And that is with Bachmann talking and walking point. Presumably. So go figure.
The latest is she got some rocky mountain air, and reports from Denver indicate:
Bachmann spoke to a Denver gathering sponsored by the Independence Institute last night and sure got the crowd pumped up. She claimed the reform proposals "have the strength to destroy this country forever."
"This cannot pass," Bachmann said according to the Colorado Independent report. "What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't pass."
Last month, Bachmann held a telephone town hall with abortion opponents and said the health care reform "battle will be won - on our knees in prayer and fasting."
Having a live-and-let-live attitude, I say let her do her prayer and fasting, it is harmless enough, but I would hope to not see her slitting her wrists over the situation. Something short of that, please. It would be better.
Back on topic after the lead-in and the Bachmannistani all-politics-is-local digression, there is the Aug. 25 Coundown feature intro:
And they nominally are a health group—United Health Group, the insurance giant literally instructing its employees to go to town halls and spit talking points. How they have rigged the system to lower how much insurance pays of your bills. How they bought the independent agencies designed to protect you from that. How they have colluded with elected officials to fatten their profits at your expense. How their CEO has made $750 million so far, and will make more if the public option does not pass.
[... longish segment on Dick Cheney omitted ...]
OLBERMANN: Republicans politicians already have government health care plans, which is a good thing because clearly they‘re sick.
Our fourth story tonight: The GOP takes a break on health care, kind of a psychotic one. Patient number one: Senator Chuck Grassley. Diagnosis: possible dementia—telling a town hall in Iowa he opposes the public option because he wants the public to have options. Doing nothing to rebuke a man also who threatened Grassley‘s fellow lawmakers, saying, quote, “I‘d take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me.”
Patient two: GOP Chair Michael Steele. Diagnosis: whiplash. Three years ago saying cuts to Medicare had to be on the table. Yesterday, releasing a senior‘s health care bill of rights promising to protect Medicare, today calling Medicare, quote, “a very good example of what we should not have happen with all of our health care.”
[...] OLBERMANN: The United Health Group, one of the largest health insurance companies in the country, says it is extremely neutral in the current debate over reform. But last week, it provided Politico.com with the talking points it gives its own employees for attending protests and town halls. Included therein, quote, “a government-run health plan would be a roadblock to meaningful health care reform.”
The United Health Group customer told Talking Points Memo and repeated to COUNTDOWN that the insurer directed him to right wing sites and events. United Health Group denies this. But in our third story tonight, what kind of company thinks opposing the president‘s health care plan is extremely neutral? According to OpenSecrets.org, President and CEO Stephen Hemsley has personally given 15,000 dollars to Democrats, 41,000 to Republicans and 36,000 more to United‘s political action committee, a committee which has given hundreds of thousands to Republicans, but as of the 2008 election cycle, had given 61 percent to Democrats, who now, of course, control the health care debate.
All of that, of course, is legal.
However, after fighting lawsuits filed by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the American Medical Association, lawsuits which accused United Health Group of a scheme to defraud patients, which United Health Group denied, United Health Group decided to settle those suits one week before President Obama took office.
Here‘s how the scheme worked: for most Americans, when you go out of network, your insurance pays a preset percentage, not of your actual bill, but of what they think your bill should be. The, quote, “usual and customary bill.” So if your insurance company covered 80 percent of out-of-network costs, and the usual and customary rate estimate for a chest X-Ray was 100 bucks, your insurance company paid you 80 bucks, even if your actual X-ray costs 150.
Why?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHEN HEMSLEY: : Physician reimbursement based on nothing but the doctor‘s bill is simply not economically tenable for consumers, nor sustainable for our health care system.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: So what would be economically tenable? For decades, insurance companies bought their estimates of usual and customary from two competing databases. Seven months after Mr. Hemsley joined United Health Group, the company purchased one of those databases. Ten months later, it bought the other one.
Just a year and a half later, the AMA sued, claiming United Health Group was now low-balling the usual and customary rates used by the insurance industry, so insurance companies, including United Health Group, could cheat patients and providers on their reimbursements, telling patients the company providing their rate estimates was, quote, “independent.”
While United Health Group was telling other insurance companies they would get a 16 to one return on investment if they bought those rate estimates from United Health Group. Cuomo said United Health Group low balled consumers by as much as 30 percent.
United Health Group‘s own general counsel said “conflicts of interest were inherent.” Mr. Hemsley did not.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEMSLEY: We understand that appearance and that appearance of an inherent conflict.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: United Health Group agreed to pay 50 million to set up a new actually independent database and to reimburse patients and providers 350 million dollars, although a judge is still deciding whether or not that is enough.
A Senate committee concluded that millions of Americans, including more than one million military families, paid billions more for out-of-network health care than they should have.
Republicans like to quote the Lewin Group‘s claim that more than 100 million Americans would ditch employer health plans for a public option. House Whip Eric Cantor, Orrin Hatch of Senate Finance, they have called Lewin non-partisan.
But the Lewin Group, too, is owned by United Health Group, which has given thousands to Hatch and Cantor in just the past two years.
Before United Health Group, Hemsley spent 23 years at Arthur Anderson Accounting, serving as chief financial officer from fall of 1995 until when he left in ‘97. For services overlapping that period, Arthur Anderson Accounting became embroiled in several scandals, sued for fraud over its accounting for Waste Management Incorporated, denied wrongdoing. Settled for 95 million.
Sued over Sunbeam Accounting. Denied wrongdoing. Settled for 180 million. Fined more than seven million.
Sued over the Baptist Foundation of Arizona. These investors, many of who are elderly, trusted the misleading financial statements audited by Anderson. That from then Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano. Denied wrong doing. Settled for 217 million.
And Enron, where Arthur Anderson Accounting was both auditor and consultant. By the time both companies came down, Mr. Hemsley was gone.
In 1999, Mr. Hemsley negotiated a new deal as United Health Group president. United Health Group‘s compensation committee gave him stock options, back dated stock options, meaning they were back dated to when the stock was low. So they were worth more, more money the second he got them. This saved him the trouble of having to wait until the stock price actually rose.
Two years later, after Hemsley hired the chairman of United Health Group compensation committee as a personal money manager, United Health Group investors were still being told the compensation committee was, quote, independent.
Both United Health Group‘s auditor and consultant to the compensation committee, Arthur Anderson Accounting.
When the “Wall Street Journal” revealed the back dating, investors sued. United Health Group got rid of its CEO at the time. It replaced him with the man who received the second most valuable package of back dated options, Hemsley, who said he knew nothing about the backdating. Investors sued again, claiming Hemsley had signed off on those options.
Why would United Health Group keep Hemsley if that were true? Quote, “the impact of the stock was significantly mitigated with the retention of Hemsley. If both had been forced to leave the company, then investors would have looked at it as a wholesale management change.”
Hemsley denied wrong-doing, but agreed to return some of his options, 190 million dollars worth.
According to “Business Week,” United Health Group has, quote, “achieved a secondary aim of constraining the new benefit that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured.”
After Republican Chuck Grassley complained last year, United Health Group stop marketing a plan to seniors that left them thinking they were fully covered when they only had supplemental coverage.
Last year, hospital executives raided big insurance companies in a national survey. Aetna was best. Well Point second worse. United Health Group was worst. Favorable, eight percent, unfavorable, 91 percent.
United Health Group has reportedly hit small businesses and consumers with regular double-digit rate hikes recently, far out-stripping inflation. In 2007, United Health Group denied, but agreed to settle, claims of handling patient claims improperly in at least 37 states.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I tried to explain to them that if I do not have this, I will die. And the only response she gave me was OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: President Obama is now asking United Health Group for advice on how to reform health care. He met with Hemsley twice this May. On June 1st, lead senators on health care asked Senator Kent Conrad to come up with an alternative to the public option. Three days later, Senator Conrad met with Hemsley, and top United Health Group lobbyists Simon Stevens.
Conrad has since that meeting led an effort to create non-profit medical cooperatives, “Business Week” reported. “With less heft than a proposed national plan, the state medical cooperatives would pose a far weaker competitive threat to private insurers.”
Conrad said the idea of co-ops came out of conversations in my office. Senator Conrad‘s office told COUNTDOWN, quote, “you‘re barking up the wrong tree. Co-ops were not discussed. The senator met with him for 15 minutes to discuss care coordination, and how that could lead to both cost savings and better health care outcomes.”
“Investment News” reports a public option would benefit insurers who could handle the cost of care coordination. “Only the largest insurers, such as Aetna, Well Point and United Health Group could do that.”
Late this Spring on the Finance Committee, which Conrad sits, it was reportedly planning to have you pick up 24 percent of your medical bills on top of your premiums. But then, quote, “Stevens and his united health care colleagues urged a more industry friendly ratio.”
The Finance Committee decided that now that you will pay 35 percent of your medical bills on top of your premiums.
Last year United Health Group made a profit of five billion dollars. Thus, in a dozen years in United Health Group‘s employ, Mr. Hemsley total compensation has been valued at three quarters of a billion dollars.
So far.
[...]
Three quarters of a billion dollars, to this Hemsley, for figuring ways to jigger the market and fool people and make a five billion dollar corporate profit last year so that his stock options would be more valuable.
Even if the government might have a few inefficiencies, its CEO, a chap named Obama, makes far less per year base salary, without any stock optioins since the US of A so far is not a privately owned and traded operation. Despite the Hemsleys.
Finally, if you feel I picked an unfavorable photo of the man, here's a picture from Strib (accompanying its reporting of the stock option backdating scandal):
Forbes has these "pictures" here and here, [not photos, but they depict the man for who he is].
Business Week, here. A trade outlet's "picture" here, source of the opening Hemsley photo.
Finally, a few loose ends showing the lovability of a cobra, here comparatively showing Hemsley's place in the snake pit, also here, here [a Twin Cities outlet], here, and here.
This is NOT a photo of Hemsley. I look forward to Congressman Waxman bringing in this bunch, and having them sworn and under oath and quizzed on CSPAN having to justify themselves and private insurance not having a public option "to keep them honest" because I feel it would help inform and energize the public in gaining understanding of the true issues at stake. I expect they will be seen justifying themselves and their actions the way Willie Sutton justified robbing banks."Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it so much that one or two weeks later I'd be out looking for the next job. But to me the money was the chips, that's all."
"Go where the money is...and go there often."
____UPDATE____
This link.