Cramer on BloggingStocks: More stimulus, please!

Fortune 500, and now every company that sets up shop in East Asia. Who are the real Americans? Who do they really represent?
Frustrated Americans have long complained that their insurance companies valued the all-mighty buck over their health care. Today, a retired insurance executive confirmed their suspicions, arguing that the industry that once employed him regularly rips off its policyholders.

Retired health insurance executive Wendell Potter told Congress today that insurance companies routinely rip off customers.
"[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors," former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter said during a hearing on health insurance today before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Potter, who has more than 20 years of experience working in public relations for insurance companies Cigna and Humana, said companies routinely drop seriously ill policyholders so they can meet "Wall Street's relentless profit expectations."
"They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment," Potter said. "…(D)umping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line."
Small businesses, in particular, he said, have had trouble maintaining their employee health insurance coverage, he said.
"All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year's premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or stop offering coverage altogether," he said.
Potter also faulted insurance companies for being misleading both in advertising their policies to new customers and in communicating with existing policyholders.
More and more people, he said, are falling victim to "deceptive marketing practices" that encourage them to buy "what essentially is fake insurance," policies with high costs but surprisingly limited benefits.
Insurance companies continue to mislead consumers through "explanation of benefits" documents that note what payments the insurance company made and what's left for consumers to pay out of pocket, Potter said.
The documents, he said, are "notoriously incomprehensible."
"Insurers know that policyholders are so baffled by those notices they usually just ignore them or throw them away. And that's exactly the point," he said. "If they were more understandable, more consumers might realize that they are being ripped off."

6-25-2009 @ 5:16PM

dalehenkel
Way to go. I noticed older people do not blame or expect the government to solve their problems, especially during hard times. The older folks in my neighborhood find ways to get work, money, food, feed, etc. After years of having a "can"t find a job" mentality, I realized that a recession applies to other people but to not me.

Some yokel on page 2 said that Regan and Bush tax cuts are bad. I am forced to remind that when president Kennedy was faced with signs of economic slow down, he also made tax cuts and since his presidency was much closer to the time of the Depression, I bet he had a clue of what he was doing.

Bottom line, FDR's policies did not work. Anybody who calls for return to FDR's policies obviously does not know what they are talking about.

Ever so often coporate institutions and hedgefunds siphon up the American people's wealth. They did it back in the 80's. I was young then but my father lost 100's of thousands in that bear market as did many a retail investor. The same thing was done starting 2 and a half years ago starting with pushing up oil with people paying $5 for gas to get back and forth to work, which increased the cost of goods and services, taxes-city,county,state, and fed were raised, mortgage assets were re-collected by mortgage companies while they kept all the paid in premiums, and of coarse another financial tute and hedge fund led bear market. All siphoned up $Trillions of private American saved up wealth. They knew the savings was FAT for the taking.

Then what happened after they siphoned up as much of the private Americans wealth they could siphon up? They printed up a crap load of unbacked, but to be backed up, brand new cash for the American people to back up through future taxes. Then what did they do with this new money? They issued it to the very thieves that siphoned up the old money. They give it to the coporates and to the banks. Who are globalists by the way.

No, No, No! The way to fix this raped country is for the American people to send a message to the corporates and to Washington, and this can be done by immediately stop dead in the tracks, the buying of Chinese Imported products that the U.S. corporations have become addicted to. The appearingly cheap shelf prices has been the draw for tearing down American industrialization and with that the jobs have left town. These globalist corporation are making killer profits on the imported products made by extremely cheap foriegn labor, While the American people suffer the de-industrialization of America, job loss, and get to enjoy the raped economy we see today, while these anti-American corporation pack their pockets with extremely high volumes of globalized profits. Stop shopping and do without and both the globalist corporations and Washington will get the message! Keep feeding them and they will continue down the path of raping the American people. It's going to take the American people,(the consumer), to break the globalist's drug habit. Stand up and fight people! We have been financially drained, bent over, and RAPED by Washington and their handlers, the globalist corporates! Then you will see jobs return. You think I like having to say this? I am saddened to have to say this. And it won't be an easy walk out the wilderness they have created by their greed. Break their habit!

Stay out of those malls! Tell your wife. Tell your children. No more consumption of imports. It is all imported labor. Everytime you purchase it you are supporting a corporate globalist's drug habit of de-industrializing the U.S. That's why this economy is in the shape it is in and no jobs for Americans.