WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Tuesday that after much pressure on insurance companies to disclose how money from premiums is spent, Aetna Insurance Co. recently made a $4.9 billion amendment to its 2008 health insurance regulatory filings.

"This $4.9 billion correction is a direct result of the Senate Commerce Committee's four-month investigation into the percentage of each premium dollar health insurance companies spend on patient care," according to a press release from the office of Rockefeller, who is chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

The new filings show that Aetna spends less on small business health care than previously reported, the release said.

"Health insurance companies have a duty to provide accurate financial information both to consumers and to their regulators about how much money they actually spend on health care and how much they spend on profits, on executive salaries, and on figuring out how to deny care to people when they really need it," Rockefeller said in the release from his office. "Unfortunately, it looks like Aetna and other health insurers haven't been taking this duty very seriously. I'm disappointed that my committee had to launch a full-scale congressional investigation to get these companies to meet their basic reporting obligations."

In August 2009, the Commerce Committee began investigating how private health insurance companies spend the billions of dollars of premiums they receive each year from individuals and small businesses. A key financial measure in the health care industry is the "medical loss ratio," the percentage of each premium dollar that insurers use to pay their policyholders' claims versus other expenses such as salaries and profits.

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