From Citi analyst Carl McDonald:
Fundamentally, things aren’t going to be as good for managed care in 2012 as they were in 2011 — While pricing remains above cost trends this year, the spread isn’t nearly as wide as it was in 2011, primarily because premium rates have moderated. In addition, favorable prior year development will now be subject to the minimum MLR calculation, which wasn’t the case last year.
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The MLR is yet another devastating interference by our political elite in how our private industry is run. Our government cares nothing about how our insurers maintain their own health, because our political elite is dead set on extracting as much free health care from our insurers as possible for the benefit of their greedy voters.
I don’t care how much profit my insurer makes, as long as I get a fair price for my health insurance premiums and good service as agreed in my contract. I don’t want my premiums to be jacked up (as they are now) to cover all the uncompensated care that our health care providers are forced to give to those who refuse to pay for their own health care.
If our political elite wants effective, efficient health care, then they must stop forcing our health care providers to donate their goods and services to privileged groups and individuals. Our beseiged providers must then scam and defraud me and my insurer with overtreatment and inflated claims to make themselves whole.
It is disgusting that our political elite forces me and my insurer to hand out their freebies for them, while making my insurer pare its overhead to the bone to allow more ready cash to be available for our government’s legalized theft and handout of patronage.