Profiteers

America’s Health Insurance Grinches

December 29, 2024 Lynn Parramore, Institute for New Economic Thinking. Educate! Greed, Health Care, Health Insurance, Profiteers

In the past two weeks, one thing has become crystal clear in America: the public outrage after the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson exposed a seething fury over the health insurance racket. No amount of media finger-wagging at public perversity or partisan attempts to frame Luigi Mangione’s act as a statement from the left or right can hide the reality: the people, from all sides, are livid about the healthcare system—and with good reason. In the 21st century, Americans have expressed their view that healthcare is deteriorating, not advancing.

Behind UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Is A Larger System Of Corporate Rule

December 13, 2024 Derek Seidman, Truthout. Educate!, Strategize! Corporatism, health, Health Insurance, Profiteers, United Healthcare

The killing of UnitedHealthcare’s Brian Thompson — a brazen assassination of a wealthy CEO in the streets of midtown Manhattan — shocked the United States. But the tsunami of mass anger unleashed against a hated for-profit health care system has so far defined the story in the news. The killing sparked a deluge of personal testimonies of horrifying experiences with health insurance corporations. Dark humor around the shooting continues to flood social media. Millions of people in the U.S. viscerally hate health insurance corporations, and see these companies and their CEOs as symbols of the worst kind of corporate greed.

How Health Insurance Became A Boon For Business

December 9, 2024 Juan Cruz Ferre, Left Voice. Educate! Class Struggle, Health Care, Health Insurance, Profiteers

UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was killed in a targeted shooting outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan on December 4, 2024, when he was about to speak at an investor conference. While mourning and preoccupation spread among economic and political elites, a mix of celebration and snark dominated social media commentary. There has been an outpouring of empathy for the perpetrator, shirts with the murder scene printed on it, and even a UnitedHealth CEO shooter look-alike contest in Washington Square Park.

We Need A Care System That Treats Patients With Dignity

November 27, 2024 Connie Choi, Inequality.org. Educate! health, Health Care, Hospitals, Profiteers

Earlier this year, I lost my dad to complications from diabetes. He was first admitted to the hospital two days before Thanksgiving of last year. Over the course of the next nine months, he suffered through 15 surgeries and 14 hospital stays. In between those stays, he was shuffled between skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, and board and care homes. While watching my dad’s decline in health, I learned the differences of what those terms meant in real-time as my family and I tried to navigate a complicated, and oftentimes unforgiving, health care system. All in all, he went to four separate hospitals and six outpatient facilities to receive his so-called “care.”

In Vermont, Where Almost Everyone Has Insurance, Many Can’t Get Care

November 8, 2024 Phil Galewitz, MedPage Today. Educate! Health Care, Health Insurance, Profiteers, Vermont

On a warm autumn morning, Roger Brown walked through a grove of towering trees whose sap fuels his maple syrup business. He was checking for damage after recent flooding. But these days, his workers' health worries him more than his trees'. The cost of Slopeside Syrup's employee health insurance premiums spiked 24% this year. Next year it will rise 14%. The jumps mean less money to pay workers, and expensive insurance coverage that doesn't ensure employees can get care, Brown said. "Vermont is seen as the most progressive state, so how is healthcare here so screwed up?"

Inside The Company Helping America’s Biggest Health Insurers Deny Coverage

October 24, 2024 T. Christian Miller, Patrick Rucker and David Armstrong, ProPublica. Educate! health, Health Care, Health Insurance, Profiteers

Every day, patients across America crack open envelopes with bad news. Yet another health insurer has decided not to pay for a treatment that their doctor has recommended. Sometimes it’s a no for an MRI for a high school wrestler with a strained back. Sometimes for a cancer procedure that will help a grandmother with a throat tumor. Sometimes for a heart scan for a truck driver feeling short of breath. But the insurance companies don’t always make these decisions. Instead, they often outsource medical reviews to a largely hidden industry that makes money by turning down doctors’ requests for payments, known as prior authorizations. Call it the denials for dollars business.

How A Network Of Nonprofits Enriches Fundraisers

June 18, 2024 Ellis Simani, ProPublica. Educate! Corruption, Nonprofits, Philanthropy, Profiteers

In September 2020, the Federal Trade Commission joined regulators in four states to sue four men behind a notorious telemarketing company called Outreach Calling. The FTC alleged that the company, which it described as a “sprawling fundraising operation,” had raised millions on the promise of helping the needy — cancer patients, veterans, firefighters — but instead used the money to line its pockets. The case was meant to put fundraisers on notice. The FTC would not only go after charities that improperly spent donor dollars, but it would “aggressively pursue their fundraisers who participate in the deception,” a news release said.

The Slow Death Of A Prison Profiteer

April 12, 2024 Dana Floberg And Morgan Duckett, Scheer Post. Strategize! Activism, Bankruptcy, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Profiteers, Securus

Last week, the nation’s largest prison and jail telecom corporation, Securus, effectively defaulted on more than a billion dollars of debt. After decades of preying on incarcerated people and their loved ones with exploitative call rates and other predatory practices that have driven millions of families into debt, Securus is being crushed under the weight of its own. In March, the company’s creditors gave the corporation an eight-month extension to pay up, urging its sale to a new owner to stave off an otherwise imminent bankruptcy.

How Medicare Advantage Care Denials Affect Patients

March 7, 2024 Matthew Cunningham-Cook , Portside. Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Profiteers, UnitedHealthcare

In 2023, insurance behemoth UnitedHealth spent $8 billion buying back its stock to juice its stock price—and its executive compensation, which is tied to the company’s stock price. It spent 39% more on stock buybacks in 2023 than in 2022. In 2023, it also spent $6.7 billion on dividend payments—a 10% jump from the prior year. The company’s CEO, Sir Andrew Witty, pulled in nearly $21 million in 2022—a 13% hike from 2021. (His compensation for 2023 hasn’t been disclosed yet.) Also in 2023, UnitedHealth spent $10.76 million lobbying Congress.

French Farmers Give Macron A Headache

February 5, 2024 John Mullen, Green Left. Resist! Capitalism, Direct Action, Emmanuel Macron, Farmers, France, Profiteers

As French President Emmanuel Macron’s government, under new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, moves ever further to the right, a radical mass movement is again shaking the country. Last year, the biggest workers’ movement for decades mobilised millions across the country in an attempt to defend retirement pensions. This year it is the turn of the farmers to revolt. Six thousand tractors were present at 120 blockades, and at least 16 motorways were brought to a standstill on January 30. Regional government headquarters have been covered with manure, and hypermarket distribution centres — as well as Toulouse airport — paralysed.

Profits And Payouts Over Passenger Safety

January 19, 2024 Lucy Dean Stockton, The Lever. Educate! Airplane, Boeing, Profiteers, Safety

While the companies responsible for the door plug that blew out of a plane in mid-air last week were cutting corners, outsourcing manufacturing, laying off employees, and working to evade expensive safety upgrades, they paid their top executives $817 million and showered Wall Street investors with $68 billion in dividends and stock buybacks over the past decade. By some estimates, the amount spent on stock buybacks that enriched shareholders was more than the projected cost of making safety upgrades that experts say were necessary. Boeing, manufacturer of the 737 Max 9 jet that suffered the mid-flight rupture last week, laid off tens of thousands of workers in 2020, following the grounding of its entire 737 Max fleet after two catastrophic crashes that together killed 346 people.

Shock Treatment In The Emergency Room

July 30, 2023 Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect. Educate! Doctors, Health Care, Profiteers, Worker Rights and Jobs

One of the nation’s biggest employers of emergency physicians is liquidating, in one of the more unruly sagas American medicine has experienced since the first wave of the pandemic. The collapsing entity is American Physician Partners, a private equity–owned operator of about 135 hospital emergency rooms and hospital-owned “freestanding” ERs in 18 states, which was co-founded by a sitting Republican congressman. Until two weeks ago, the company was by all appearances relatively indistinguishable from the other deeply indebted, private equity–backed mega-practices that staff ERs with round-the-clock physicians and “midlevels” (physician assistants and nurse practitioners).

Climate Campaigners Outraged At Shell Maintaining Oil Production Levels

June 15, 2023 Maryam Jameela, The Canary. Resist! climate crisis, Fossil Fuels, Profiteers, Shell Oil

Shell has announced that it plans to maintain oil production levels until 2030. Green campaigners were outraged at the news from the British energy giant. Climate activists were also aghast at the company’s massive payout for shareholders. In 2021, based on output from 2019, Shell flagged a crude output reduction of between 1 and 2 % per year. This was supposed to be part of its carbon neutrality plan. However, on the 14 June the company said that production would remain stable until 2030. The Guardian reported that: Shell will invest $40bn in oil and gas production between 2023 and 2035, compared with between $10bn and $15bn in “low-carbon” products. A Shell spokesperson argued that this wasn’t a u-turn.

Drought Profiteers: Wall Street Billionaires Snatch Up America’s Water

April 7, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Capitalism, Environment, Profiteers, Water

It is time to stop calling the financial industry executives who are buying up freshwater “investors” or “hedge fund managers” and instead call them “drought profiteers.” I mean, you can also call them vultures and parasites. They all apply quite well. Come up with your own names for them. Get creative with it. Really listen to your heart. Water. We all need it to survive. It’s the main ingredient in alcohol. Just think of how many more people would be killed each year if we didn’t have alcohol to take the edge off. But here’s the problem: as the climate crisis causes drought around the world, the richest of the rich are snatching up all the fresh water.

Railroad Workers Call For Immediate Action To Prevent Train Wrecks

February 24, 2023 Railroad Workers United, Popular Resistance. Resist! pollution, Profiteers, Railroads, Workplace Safety

East Palestine, OH - It has been three weeks since the tragic train wreck that devastated this small town. Despite the initial lack of attention it received, politicians and bureaucrats have finally become aware of the tragedy. Railroad Workers United (RWU) urges everyone concerned not to be distracted by rhetoric, hyperbole, promises, and lies but instead to focus on the primary reasons for the derailment and take immediate action to prevent future disasters. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Preliminary Report released on February 23rd clearly stated that "This was 100% preventable..

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