Getting While The Getting’s Good

by digby

If you thought your credit card issuers were screwing their customers in advance of new regulations, get a load of what you can expect from your health insurance providers:

Health insurance giant Aetna is planning to force up to 650,000 clients to drop their coverage next year as it seeks to raise additional revenue to meet profit expectations.

In a third-quarter earnings conference call in late October, officials at Aetna announced that in an effort to improve on a less-than-anticipated profit margin in 2009, they would be raising prices on their consumers in 2010. The insurance giant predicted that the company would subsequently lose between 300,000 and 350,000 members next year from its national account as well as another 300,000 from smaller group accounts.

“The pricing we put in place for 2009 turned out to not really be what we needed to achieve the results and margins that we had historically been delivering,” said chairman and CEO Ron Williams. “We view 2010 as a repositioning year, a year that does not fully reflect the earnings potential of our business. Our pricing actions should have a noticeable effect beginning in the first quarter of 2010, with additional financial impact realized during the remaining three quarters of the year.”

I don’t know what the health care plans might have in them to anticipate this kind of thing once HCR is passed, but if the latest talking points from the White House on denial and rescission are any indication of how they are thinking about these possibilities, it’s nada.

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