I'm happy that we have so many people who put themselves on the line at these protests. Not that I think it changes corporate minds -- the only thing that will do that is if people show up at the executives' suburban mansions:

Protesters crashed Aetna Inc.'s annual shareholders meeting in Philadelphia on Friday morning, accusing the Connecticut-based health insurer of publicly supporting President Obama's health-care plan while privately funneling money to its opponents - in particular, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Aetna chairman Mark T. Bertolini had just gone to the microphone at Le Meridien Philadelphia, a Center City hotel, when the protesters walked into the meeting, chanting and carrying signs.

Hotel security and police hurried the group of about 20 out, detaining three of them for 30 minutes. No arrests were made, said one of the organizers of the protest.

"Unfortunately, Aetna's shareholder meeting this morning was disrupted by a group of protesters," the company said in a statement. "We believe this disruption was inappropriate, uncivil and unsafe. Aetna has been a strong proponent of health-care reform and has been working to shape the future of health care for the past decade."

After the group was removed from the hotel's third-floor lobby, where coffee and tea where being served for shareholders, the protest resumed outside.

[...] The protesters based their accusations on a November story by Bloomberg News that used sources to connect an $86.2 million donation made to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2009 from America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry lobbying group.

The donation, which was noted in the Chamber's tax returns, was one of the largest to the business advocacy groups, and helped pay for advertisements, polling and efforts to drum up grass roots opposition to Obama's health plan, a Chamber spokesman told Bloomberg. Neither the Chamber nor AHIP would comment on the source of the money.

On Friday, one of Aetna's chief spokesmen, Mohit Ghose, who previously worked for AHIP, declined to comment.

However, the company did issue a statement Friday saying that "we also worked through our testimony to Congress, our meetings on Capitol Hill, and through the efforts of such groups as AHIP and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to educate the American people about the negative implications of a public option in health-care reform."

[...] Initially, they were allowed to remain in the meeting, but they were ejected after the disruption began, said Marc Stier, director of Health Care for America Now Pennsylvania, the group that organized the protest with Action United, another advocacy group.

Might be time for Steve Poizner to come in from the campaign trail and have a look at the newest rate increases. According to the LA Times, the Gang of Five here in California is ganging up on small business owners with less than 50 employees.

Five major insurers in California's small-business market are raising rates 12% to 23% for firms with fewer than 50 employees, according to a survey by The Times.

Similar increases are being felt by many small businesses across the nation, including those in Texas, Ohio and Florida — mainly the result of escalating costs for medical care and pharmaceuticals, insurers say.

Insurers claim they either underpriced their policies or had unusually high claims.

Blue Shield, for example, said hospital charges rose nearly 20% last year, while physician costs and pharmaceutical fees increased almost as much. Anthem Blue Cross also cited the cost of medical care in explaining its average rate hikes of 13% this year.

"We understand that one group that has been most hard hit by the economic downturn of the past few years is the state's more than 3 million small businesses, who we all rely on to be major contributors to our local economy," Anthem spokeswoman Peggy Hinz said.

"We want to be competitive in the marketplace, but we also want to take care of our members," Hinz added. "We work each day to do both."

Forgive me if I'm skeptical of this. It seems suspect to me that the group slammed with high increases is the same group who is eligible for a Federal tax credit of up to 35%. Further, why wasn't that tax credit mentioned in any of the reports about the rate increases? The employers they use as examples are likely to be the same ones eligible for the 35% break.

Why not mention that in this context, LA Times?

I have heard anecdotal reports that health insurance agents here in California representing one of these companies are visiting small business clients and telling them the apocalypse is upon them. Statements range from claims of outlandish premium increases to the outright falsehood that employers will only have one plan to choose from after reform. They begin by informing employers who they finally managed to shift into high deductible plans with Health Savings Accounts that HSAs are dead. (They're not dead, just reduced to reflect improved insurance options).

By the time they're done, they've convinced these small business owners that Satan lives in the form of health care reform. This is no different than what they did when California passed laws limiting auto insurers' rate increases. While these stories are anecdotal and not indicative of a widespread policy on the part of those companies, it still strikes me as part of a larger strategy to undermine confidence in the health care reform law.

What we have here is a group hissy fit thrown by the insurers who, until now, have had complete freedom to raise rates and lower benefits at will. While increases may be warranted in some cases, there's no reason to believe they're warranted to this extent or only on this group. It seems to me they chose the most vulnerable and least powerful group to pick on.

Kevin Drum has exactly the right answer for the insurers' woes:

If conservatives want to avoid the specter of federally funded single-payer healthcare in the United States, this is what they need to come to terms with. Canada provides high quality healthcare for everyone — including small businesses and the elderly — for a cost per person of about $4,000 per year. Ditto for France and the Netherlands. Britain and Japan do it for about $3,000. Ann Terranova is being asked to pay more than $6,000 per person — and that's for three working-age employees.

Insurers know single payer is still a hammer over their heads. We're seeing Vermont adopt an experimental program with it now. If it's successful, I expect other states to try it. Here in California, it's only a governor's signature away, provided we actually elect the right Governor.

DOWNLOADS: (2596)

PLAYS: (9517)

Embed

(h/t Heather.)

Former CIGNA PR chief Wendell Potter is very, very angry over Obama's movement away from true healthcare reform:

Not only is Obama clearly ready to throw the public option overboard, he is embracing the requirement that we all be forced to buy insurance from private insurers. That means your tax dollars and mine will be used to pay subsidies to the big insurers to provide coverage to people who can't afford to buy their policies, because the big insurers charge far more than they should because Wall Street investors demand that they do.

One of the people who undoubtedly talked Obama away from the public option and into supporting this mandate is his new BFF, Aetna CEO Ron Williams. Williams, who made $65 million off of Aetna's policyholders' premiums over the past two years and who was the mastermind behind Aetna's shedding of eight million members a few years ago to meet Wall Street's demands, is the insurance industry's leading champion of requiring us all to buy insurance. And, of course, without a public option, we'll all be forced to buy coverage from Aetna or one of the other private insurers.

According to a recent article in Forbes, Williams has been to the White House a half a dozen times recently to advise the president and his staff on health care reform. That same article quoted a Wall Street analyst as saying that Aetna likely will dump about 600,000 policyholders during the coming months to satisfy its investors' unrelenting profit demands.

During his speech in Montana, Obama talked a lot of trash about the insurance industry. Don't be fooled by that tough talk. It's all part of a strategy to try get us to believe we'll get the reform he promised during the campaign. Industry leaders are in fact delighted he's denouncing their behavior, because they believe most of his supporters -- who were hopeful the stars might finally have aligned for real reform -- will be fooled into thinking the reform bill that reaches his desk will benefit them more than the special interests with their armies of lobbyists. And they know the nonprofit cooperatives Sebelius and Gibbs are now trying to sell us on don't have a prayer of succeeding. The big for-profits will never let them get off the ground in any meaningful way.

Sadly, I believe the fat cats are winning and that the bill Congress sends the president will be one that gives an industry with an unsustainable business model a new lease on life and a guarantee of unprecedented future profits.

So I hope the president's aides are buying lots of lipstick. He'll need all he can get to put on that pig of a bill.