HEALTH CARE
Health Care insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter talks about the next PR move insurers are likely to make in order to keep putting profits ahead of patients.
More from Potter: Want proof that Big Insurance has figured out how to make a lot of money off reform? Last Monday WellPoint announced it will pay nearly $5 billion to buy the country’s largest private Medicaid managed care company, AmeriGroup. Rest assured that lobbyists for WellPoint and other firms wanting to get their hands on that new Medicaid money will have a “here’s how it has to be” talk with their buddies on Capitol Hill. If you look at recent quarterly earnings reports from the big five for-profit insurance companies (UnitedHealth, WellPoint, Aetna, Cigna and Humana), you’ll see that the biggest growth in their membership has come not from the private sector but from public programs like Medicare and Medicaid.