TODAY- Jobloss, Corporations and Farmers

Top Insurers Post Record Profits While Dropping 2.7M Policyholders

A new report says the nation’s five biggest insurance companies set an all-time record for combined profits last year. According to Health Care for America Now, the companies WellPoint, CIGNA, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna Inc. and Humana posted cumulative profits of $12.2 billion. That marks a $4.4 billion, or 56 percent, increase over 2008 and amounts to an average profit margin of 5.2 percent. CIGNA saw the highest profit jump, with an increase of 346 percent. Health Care for America Now says the insurers’ record year was aided by three factors: dropping customers with costly medical needs; diverting spending from medical care to administrative costs and margins; and a higher enrollment in public programs, like Medicare Advantage, that pay insurers higher fees. Overall, the insurance companies dropped 2.7 million customers from their rolls last year. The report’s release comes ahead of a day of nationwide rallies next Wednesday organized by Health Care for America Now.

Improved Corporate Profits Not Leading to Job Growth

New figures show the improving fortune of major corporations isn’t leading to a simultaneous creation of new jobs. Bloomberg News reports a majority of the Standard & Poor 500 have increased revenues to a combined $1.18 trillion—a $518 billion increase over the year before. But capital expenditures, or investments that could have helped create jobs, were down 43 percent.
Survey: Quarter of Job Losses Will Be Permanent

Around 8.4 million jobs have been lost since December 2007. According to economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal, around a quarter of the lost jobs are gone for good. The survey comes as the White House released an economic forecast projecting job growth this year will be too low to significantly address unemployment. The projection says employers will add just 95,000 jobs per month, a number just below what economists say is needed just to keep up with population growth.

Labor Dept. Reverses Bush-Era Farmworker Regulations

The Labor Department has unveiled new regulations it says will increase wages and labor protections for American and temporary immigrant farm workers. The new rules restore several provisions revoked in the waning days of the Bush administration, including a new method for calculating farm workers’ wages. The Labor Department says the Bush-era rules ended up reducing the wages by an average one dollar an hour for the year they were in effect.

(democracynow.org)