Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD, MPH: The Facts About the Health Insurance Industry

[RedEarth]

Most people are unaware how similar the major health insurers are to our failed Wall Street firms.They are corporate cash cows and have virtually no fiduciary responsibility and few activities for protecting or improving health or the health care system.They will devote their vast resources to prevent any meaningful health reform. They have controlled Congress and the mainstream media. The only cure is vigorous popular support for a single payer, Medicare for All reform.

This is a discussion about the huge and looming crisis in our nation’s health care system and the need for a radical paradigm changing reform. Because the issues discussed below necessarily involve a politically difficult restructuring of a large and well establish sector of our economy, the breadth and details of this reform have so far has been largely excluded from public policy discussions and debate. AHIP — American Health Insurance Plans — representing the private, for profit, health insurance companies and their partners had their annual national convention in San Diego, California this week. They are the association of all the major health insurers in the United States and their lobbying clout is unsurpassed. Major public political leaders of both parties, men like Jeb Bush, Dr. Howard Dean, and Tom Daschle attended.

As a practicing family physician who has been seeing patients since Medicare was started I can tell you what really ails our national health system. Making the correct diagnosis is important. Yet those in Washington — both in the White House and in Congress - both Republicans and Democrats — and the national media - are eagerly avoiding the right diagnosis and thus preventing public discussion about the necessary cures. As you all know if we don’t make the right diagnosis the disease will not be cured and the patient will not get better. Today the biggest barrier to improving our health care system in the United States is the private health insurance companies. They are the disease we suffer from. The best, and perhaps the only, public policy cure that will work is a single payer, Medicare for All, health care financing program. Yet due to financial power of the health insurance industry, their great financial lobbying clout, embarrassingly our elected officials are doing everything they can to avoid the current golden opportunity to create a single payer system.

I want to make only three main points:

1. The individual insurance companies are out for profit and must work to maximize their value on the stock market and not our friends. They treat patients like widgets or cost centers. This is not a culture of trust, caring, compassion, and fiduciary responsibility. If you were dumb enough to hope that Countrywide Mortgage would preserve your home and Lehman Brothers would preserve your retirement fund, then you will be stupid enough to expect Anthem Blue Cross and the other insurance companies to be there to protect your health. Yet it seems all Washington continues under this delusion.

2. The employer based private health insurance industry has been created by us, is hugely subsidized by public policy and public money and is expensive, inefficient, costly , and a structural barrier to a healthy America. It needs to be eliminated.

3. The only cure for our problem is a single payer, national, universal, health financing program like Medicare for All. This is not socialized medicine, but an efficient way to pool risk and share the unexpected costs of illness. Fifty percent of our population has virtually no medical expenses while five percent consume 25 percent of all personal medical care costs. This why we need the insurance principle: unexpected medical expenses are relatively rare and can be huge and should be spread across the whole population. Financial costs related to illness cause over 50 percent of personal bankruptcies in the United States. Over 46 million Americans are rationed out of the medical system (and during this economic catastrophe this number is growing by 10,000 people per day) 46 million people are subject to excess morbidity and mortality because they cannot afford financing and the insurance industry cannot profit from them. Health insurance is important and necessary. We need an efficient, national, publicaly sponsored, universal health financing system. This is the only treatment that will be a cure.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/june/the_facts_about_the_.php

[Cleita]

1. Woman on Ed Schultz saying that we need not a million person march on

Washington, but a 45 million person march. Ed says if Congress doesn't have a meaningful plan to serve up that this will happen because the American people are fed up. I'm ready. I'll go.

[Demoiselle]

4. So when do we march? I'm ready. (eom)

[Cleita]

5. I don't know. We should do it while they are debating it and making it into

law in the chambers. Just fill the halls of the capitol and do it.

[kath]

6. SIGN. ME. UP. I'm ready!

[madaboutharry]

2. Dr. Gordon is 100% correct.

And it is not only the insurance companies that are corrupt. The hospitals and hospital corporations along with a vast number of doctors themselves are corrupt.

[unpossibles]

3. well stated

I always wonder why the right uses the old saw "Don't let politicians choose your doctor" or whatever, when the current alternative is so much worse; letting a financier choose my doctor based on how much they will make/lose off me.

No thanks!

[Uncle Joe]

7. The whole article is an excellent read, and I believe this paragraph makes an essential point.

"Now examine the health insurance system as a whole: It should be obvious that the only functional purpose of the insurance company is to collect money (premiums) from one set of folks (people/patients) and pool it and then pay it to another set of folks (medical providers). Other than acting as a bank, there is NO value added. All the rest is expensive smoke and mirrors: marketing, false consumer choices, medical rating, care management — all of which they do poorly and very expensively. In fact, all these expensive activities are designed to either maximize profit or to be a window dressing rationale for their profit. Furthermore, the health insurance industry itself and its egregious expenses and profits are virtually wholly a creation of tax payer subsidy and 70 years of one sided industry supportive legislation. Federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, the Veteran’s Administration, Crippled Children’s Services, SCHIP, and the Ryan White Act take huge numbers of potentially expensive or chronically ill Americans out of the pool of privately insured people, allowing these private firms to cherry pick the most affordable enrollees."

Four primary entities; make money from the concept of for profit health insurance.

1. Shareholders.

2. Upper management with their out-sized salary and bonuses tied to the stock price or quarterly profits.

3. The corporate media from selling their commercials

4. Bribed political "leaders" willing to the sell the American People down the river for blood money.

I believe the for profit "health" insurance industry is nothing but a legalized casino with the government's blessing to gamble and profit off of the American People's illness and injury. There is no legitimate purpose for it and just as it is in Vegas; betting against the house over the long run will only cost the American People as a nation, we will continue to weaken as a whole; by health and finances, the longer this institutionalized corruption is allowed to exist.

Thanks for the thread, RedEarth.

[Wednesdays]

8. K&R

:kick:

[MasonJar]

9. Thank you, doctor. Please send this to Obama. I would if I knew how.

Obama needs to find out THAT WE WANT SINGLE PAYER AND THAT FOR MUST OF US THAT IS THE ONLY OPTION. We are talking 62% here versus the corporate lobbyists, the majority of Congress, President Obama and the media. I am tired of the people being ignored. How about the rest of you? NNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO to corporate money buying everything they want from OUR representatives.