SOCIALIZED PROFITS FOR WELLPOINT?

Wow. From this Dailykos post we find that Anthem, a provider of health care insurance, is suing the state of Maine to guarantee their profits.



In a court filing Maine's Superintendent of Insurance explained that there is no statute mandating that Maine provide Anthem with guaranteed profits.

One argument made was that just as any family does during a recession Anthem must also look to cutting costs. Maine's Superintendent argued that the state is under no obligation guarantee their profit margins because doing so would be akin to creating an environment of "socialized profits" as opposed to competitive, market-driven, profits.

- Mark

P.S. It should be noted that in a congressional hearing it was revealed that WellPoint (or their subsidiary, Anthem) was sued in California. WellPoint was forced to reverse over 4,500 decisions to drop policyholder (i.e. rescissions) and made to pay a fine of $30 million for their rescission decisions. It was also learned that WellPoint had 1,400 different conditions what would trigger a rescission investigation (which ranged from high blood pressure and pregnancy), and that their employees were rewarded for finding ways to drop policyholders who developed expensive conditions.