The Post-COVID Health Care System Is Out of Control

[TexasTowelie]

After gouging Americans for record pandemic profits, the health care industry sets its sights on even more.


The coronavirus proved kind to the American health care industry. Health insurers, despite initial concerns, ended up posting record-smashing profits throughout the duration of 2020, as hospitals swelled with coronavirus patients, causing policyholders to put off expensive elective and non-emergency procedures. Less utilization and fewer claims became a financial windfall for insurers basically without precedent, as they reaped sky-high premiums without having to provide much in the way of actual health care. For 2020, insurance giant Humana reported a profit of $4.6 billion, a 31 percent increase over the company’s 2019 numbers. Cigna, meanwhile, notched $8.5 billion in profits, up 67 percent year over year. And UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest insurer, reported a stunning 2020 full-year profit of $15.4 billion, after putting up $13.8 billion in profit in a record-breaking 2019.

Pharmaceutical giants likewise reaped massive profits throughout the pandemic. Vaccine makers like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson benefited greatly from vaccine development, and have investors salivating about the potential profitability of booster shots and global rollouts down the road. And even normal pharmaceutical sales proved extremely profitable, as companies hiked drug prices during 2020 even more aggressively than the year prior. According to GoodRX, 857 of the most popular brand-name and generic drugs in the U.S. saw their prices increase by an average of 6.8 percent from January 1 to June 30, 2020, with another 67 drugs getting an additional price hike in July 2020 of over 3 percent, a higher clip than the previous year.

Beyond the standout profit-reaping, both insurance and pharmaceutical companies have enjoyed a year of relatively fond feelings from the American public, a PR windfall that has taken some of the heat off of two fiercely maligned sectors of the economy. The pharmaceutical industry’s ability to produce multiple functional vaccines recast them in a heroic light, even though the federal government paid for the overwhelming majority of the research and distribution; the willingness of insurers to pay for COVID tests, treatments, and vaccines dropped them down the list of public enemies as well.

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Last week, the FDA approved a new Alzheimer’s drug called Aduhelm, from a biotech firm called Biogen. Aduhelm represents the first new major Alzheimer’s drug in almost 20 years, which may sound promising. It would be, but for the fact that experts say that, despite the FDA’s approval, there’s not a lot of hard evidence that it actually works. In fact, three members of the advisory board who voted against approval resigned from the panel, after they were overruled and Aduhelm got the thumbs-up.

Read more: https://prospect.org/health/post-covid-health-care-system-out-of-control/

[Throck]

1. Post Covid?

When did it end?

Not over.

Just like war the profiteers gonna gouge and profit.