Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Health Insurance Premium Increases as bad as ever in 2010

I have been a professional in this business for close to 20 years now, and with all of the talks of health reform, I am pretty appalled at what health insurance carriers and their leadership has done rolling in to 2010. Small businesses are getting killed with some of the biggest premium increases I have seen in close to 20 years....we have had recent clients, SMALL BUSINESSES, getting hammered with 22-35% increases for the same benefits rolling in to a new year. It is obvious carriers are offsetting their lobbyists, the large companies in this country, by pushing costs over to individuals and small businesses - let's face it, from Aetna, to Cigna, to United Healthcare, depending on what part of the U.S. that you survey, they are in and out of the business of insuring small businesses year in and year out. It is also interesting that the highest paid CEOs in all of health insurance land, also happen to be the leaders of those carriers, United Healthcare, Aetna, and Cigna. They sure now how to enrich themselves, but perhaps it is time for the "pay czar" to step in and cap compensation for the leaders of health insurance carriers? As brokers for small business health insurance, www.healthinsurancegeeks.com, we spend time on each client each year, finding ways to lower their premium from past years' levels, or at least to remain level, which also by the way keeps our compensation level, or decreasing as well. Many brokers who enjoy the luxury of working less and less as years go on, and enjoying the fishing boat in the Hamptons, are the ones with concern. For folks like us, we work hard, it is our ethic as we are dedicated to a cause, rather than dedicated to the search of a less-than-hard earned buck, like many brokers of small and medium sized companies have enjoyed for years. The do their best to keep their clients at the same carrier year in and year out, to reduce the amount of work they do, because let's face it, public companies or large companies that are in the health insurance brokerage business are more focused on their shareholders, and profit models, than HELPING their clients. We have enjoyed such rapid growth at HealthInsuranceGeeks.com because we go above and beyond for all clients, whether they have 2, 20 or 200 employees. Clients can tell when you have passion to help, trust the Geeks.

Let's see what this Thursday, February 25th, 2010 does in the Blair House with all of the Goons from our Government continuing to "debate" on health care reform...remember, it is more than health INSURANCE reform, it is health CARE reform, so let's get all of the parties straight - doctors, hospitals, insurance carriers, governments both federal and state, medical device makers, pharmaceutical companies, insurance brokers, lawyers, I could go on and on, but those are some of the biggees -