https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-health-insurance-changed-from-protecting-patients-to-seeking-profit.html https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how

https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-health-insurance-changed-from-protecting-patients-to-seeking-profit.html https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-health-insurance... You should read this before claiming I show "total ignorance of the history of the healthcare system in America". Stop making excuses for shitty politicians. I'll quote some for you to start: >By the 1990s, the Blues, which offered insurance in all 50 states, were hemorrhaging money, having been left to cover the sickest patients. In 1994, after state directors rebelled, the Blues’ board relented and allowed member plans to become for-profit insurers. Their primary motivation was not to charge patients more, but to gain access to the stock market to raise some quick cash to erase deficits. This was the final nail in the coffin of old-fashioned noble-minded health insurance. >WellPoint’s first priority appears no longer to be its patient/ members or even the companies and unions that choose it as an insurer, but instead its shareholders and investors. As in any for-profit enterprise, executives are compensated for how well they perform that financial function and are compensated well. In 2010 WellPoint had intended to hike premiums in California by 39 percent, before an attorney general effectively nixed the plan. CEO Angela Braly received total annual compensation of more than $20 million in 2012, despite the fact that she resigned under pressure that year because the company revenues were down. Joe Swedish, the new CEO appointed in 2013, is a longtime health care executive who served at the for-profit Hospital Corporation of America. His starting salary and bonus totaled about $5 million, not including stock options. >To express their collective frustration, members gathered signatures for a MoveOn.org petition: “Anthem Blue Cross: Stop Playing Politics with Our Premiums.” They urged their insurer “to stop spending corporate funds on political campaigns, disclose everything it has spent directly or indirectly on political campaigns, and use the money to lower rates for Anthem policy-holders and California taxpayers.” >To increase profits, all insurers, regardless of their tax status, have been spending less on care in recent years and more on activities like marketing, lobbying, administration and the paying out of dividends.