Godless Capitalists VS. Godless Socialists

Jeff Rosenberg has a post up about banning the marketing of prescription drugs of which I support. I remember the warnings, just like the warnings about creating HMO's would increase health care costs, that allowing advertising would drive up prescription drug costs, not reduce them. Indeed, when Wall Street and Madison Ave. were allowed their greedy fingers into the mix, prices started inflating dramatically. The obvious, initially stated goal of containing cost certainly has not come to pass.

The radical in me sees only one option; making health care - anything to do with health care - non-profit. Not just hospitals and clinics, but insurance and pharmicuticals as well. Health care as a business is directly in conflict with the goal of health care. Healing people so they don't come back is guaranteeing a loss of profit. What business wants to lose profit?

Yeah, like that needs to be answered out loud.

With the exception of  war profiteering, people making a profit off the suffering, misery, and death of fellow human beings is by far the most vile, despicable behavior I think exists.

Back in 2006, this story was all about excessive CEO pay. But in reality, this particular issue, which was overlooked, was about a man receiving $1 billion as head of a company that efficiently contained costs by refusing to cover medical procedures.

What's different about the fire this time is that it is singeing respected CEOs like Nardelli, Raymond, and in the biggest brushfire yet, UnitedHealth (Charts) CEO William McGuire.

McGuire has long been hailed as proof that nothing is wrong with paying outlandish sums for outrageous overperformance - in his case a 40-fold increase in total return over fifteen years. ("I don't think we could have anticipated the shares [would reach] this level five years ago," McGuire has said in rejecting the "perceived problem" of his excessive comp.)

In March, the Wall Street Journal raised questions about possible options backdating at UnitedHealth (a practice that, while permissible under certain circumstances, can amount to outright theft of shareholder assets.

No wrongdoing has so far been established, but the company, the SEC, and government prosecutors are all still investigating. Even so, the stock is down 22%, a drop that has lowered the value of McGuire's trove of in-the-money options from $1.6 billion in December to a still hefty $1 billion today

Now, fast forward to 2009, and we learn why such profits were possible:

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.

It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

"No one can defend, and I certainly cannot defend, the practice of canceling coverage after the fact," said Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.), a member of the committee. "There is no acceptable minimum to denying coverage after the fact."

In case anyone is wondering, I'm more worried about Godless Capitalists than I am about Godless Socialists. These corporations are vultures, preying on the sick and dying, all in the name of efficiency and profit. It's disgusting.