America's 2007 Petulant Plutocrat of the Year

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



America's 2007
Petulant Plutocrat
of the Year

William McGuire, the mega millionaire behind the rise of America's largest private health insurance company, seems to be discovering 'justice' somewhat late in life.

December 17, 2007

By Sam Pizzigati


Drum roll, please. The time has come to name our Petulant Plutocrat of the Year.

This year, that's not easy. We simply have too many terrific candidates. War profiteers. Private equity fund strip-and-flip corporate takeover artists. Investment bankers setting Wall Street bonus records betting on subprime mortgages.

These movers and shakers all meet our basic threshold for Petulant Plutocrat of the Year consideration: They all have accumulated vast fortunes — at the expense of average Americans — and they all feel they deserve even more.

But, in the end, none of these outstanding candidates have made this year's final Petulant Plutocrat cut. We have found our 2007 Petulant Plutocrat of the Year elsewhere — in the corporate snakepit known as the health care industry.

Health care, of course, makes for a natural Petulant Plutocrat hunting ground.

No other industry in the United States, over the past quarter-century, has become more expensive, impersonal, aggravating — and profitable. And few individuals, within health care, have profited any more from this ongoing disaster area than William W. McGuire, our 2007 Petulant Plutocrat of the Year.

Last December, McGuire stepped down as the CEO of UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest health insurer, with a fortune worth thousands of times more than the net worth of the typical American family.

This December, one year later, McGuire agreed to give $418 million of that fortune back, in the largest out-of-CEO-pocket corporate scandal settlement ever. But McGuire, who’ll turn 60 next year, remains phenomenally wealthy, and he still hasn’t acknowledged any guilt. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.cipa-apex.org/toomuch/articlenew2007/Dec17a.html

[Tansy_Gold]

1. The high cost of insurance

A couple of things jumped out at me --

A.
"Almost 20 percent of working families with insurance are now paying over 10 percent of their incomes on health care."


B.
"Average working families have considerably less reason to exalt //sic//. Nearly 30 percent of Americans with health insurance, up from 18 percent in 2004, now say they're having trouble paying for food, heat, and housing. "


I am currently on COBRA, and my cost just went up to $336/month. I do not have a rent/mortgage payment or a car payment (KNOCK ON WOOD!!!), so that makes my health insurance by far my largest single monthly outlay. Higher than groceries, higher than electricity, higher than taxes or homeowner's insurance or anything else. And that figure equates to roughly 18% of my wages (when I'm working).

My benefits will run out in April, I won't be eligible for Medicare for another 6 years, I'm not even remotely eligible for Medicaid, and I have no prospects for employer-paid insurance.

What on earth gives this McGuire asshole the moral authority to STEAL hundreds of millions of dollars from people who actually WORK for a living? UnitedHealth isn't providing a "service" to its policyholders; it's simply a vehicle for funneling huge, obscenely huge sums of money from the pockets of working people to the bank accounts and vacation homes and lavish lifestyles of pieces of shit like McGuire and Koslowski and Ebbers and Lay and Skilling (may he rot in jail for the rest of his miserable life).

I do not wish these people ill; I wish only that they would experience some fortunate event that catapults them back into the income level and lifestyle of the people they have sucked dry for so many years. Let them spend a week-end or ten or sixty wondering which bills will get paid the coming month and which will be allowed to slide into past-due status. Let them try to balance the cost of late fees on a credit card payment versus the reconnection charge if the phone bill doesn't get paid. Let them lie awake a few nights wondering if the car insurance premium check will hit the bank before the next payroll deposit.

Maybe there's something wrong with me that I find people like this to be just about as evil as any rapist or murderer. How many people go hungry because they can't afford both food and health insurance? How many people let their insurance lapse because they have to choose between paying the premium or paying the electric bill? (How many women stay with abusive husbands because the husband has insurance?) How many people die or suffer needlessly because some fucking piece of shit like McGuire sits on a "nest-egg" of half a BILLION dollars?

Has he ever actually wielded a knife and stabbed someone to death? No, of course not. Has he ever shot anyone? No. But I wonder how many lives he's poisoned, how many families he has starved, how many children he has abused or neglected by living like a king while they lack basic health care.

I hate people like him, and I won't apologize for the vehemence of my loathing.


Tansy Gold

[JNelson6563]

2. Sickening.

Two small bits from further down this article that demonstrate the sharpening contrast between the big money and the little people:

And the price McGuire personally has had to pay? The $418 million he agreed to forfeit earlier this month comes on top of $198 million he previously agreed to “disgorge” after the backdating scandal first broke.

snip

Average working families have considerably less reason to exalt. Nearly 30 percent of Americans with health insurance, up from 18 percent in 2004, now say they're having trouble paying for food, heat, and housing.

Terrible.

Julie

[begin_within]

3. I love the "Too Much" newsletter. I used to subscribe to it when it was a

quarterly printed newsletter. I'm glad to see they are still going as a web site. They have tons of great information that gets completely ignored by the commercial media.

[AnnieBW]

4. Shit...

And I have United Health Care, too. All health insurers are scammers.