While The five largest health Insurance companies’ profits rose by $12.2 billion last year, which represents an increase of 56% over 2008, Americans are paying more money for less coverage. Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius says that the cost of premiums is skyrocketing and profits are soaring. This doesn’t look good to the average American. In fact, it almost looks like piracy. Insurance companies don’t actually provide health care (with the possible exception of Kaiser Permanente). They simply act as a middle man, a broker if you will, often standing directly in the way of our medical coverage under the guise of managing costs.
What they manage is their bottom line, their own cost outlay–their profit margin. Actually they have no choice but to do this. As corporations they and their boards of directors answer to shareholders and are responsible for delivering profits, not health care. They don’t manage health care at all. They simply manage what they are willing to pay in order for us to get our health care while still enabling them to have their profits. And as corporations that must deliver these profits, they have an undeniable conflict of interest.
What they manage is their bottom line, their own cost outlay–their profit margin. Actually they have no choice but to do this. As corporations they and their boards of directors answer to shareholders and are responsible for delivering profits, not health care. They don’t manage health care at all. They simply manage what they are willing to pay in order for us to get our health care while still enabling them to have their profits. And as corporations that must deliver these profits, they have an undeniable conflict of interest.
So let’s look at the $12.2 billion identified as profit in 2009, which incidentally is a $4.4 billion increase over the previous year. And this is only the five largest insurers. One would think that this is the figure that these companies took in above and beyond the actual cost of our health care (or the health care they have actually approved and paid for). It does not. It only represents part of the above and beyond cost. In fact, according to Conservative Patriot HQ, a conservative blog, ”the top five health insurance companies reported a profit margin of 5.2% for 2009. This is but a fraction of the cost of letting insurance companies occupy the broker position for providing health care
This $12.2 billion does not include the cost of all of their employee’s salaries and benefits, which come out of the revenue figure before this profit is even figured out. It also does not include the cost of their multi-story brick buildings in all of the cities where they have buildings. Nor does it include the cost of heating and cooling these massive office enclaves that are often even larger than the very hospitals and medical clinics they have set themselves up to send us to when we need our valuable health care. There is the cost of their computer systems, executive travel and company automobiles and a vast array of costs that the average American cannot even think of that compile normal operating costs. And let’s not forget the cost of lobbying against the current push toward health care reform, which in itself is in the billions of dollars. All of these costs are subtracted from revenue to determine their profits.
These costs are simply the cost of operating a business. But they are not the cost of our actual healthcare. They are, however, compiled on top of the actual cost of our overall healthcare. And they are reflected as part of our healthcare costs. These companies stand firmly between us and our healthcare delivery system. This portion of our healthcare cost comes to a lot more than a mere $12.2 billion. It is a lot more than twice this amount. A typical family health care plan today costs the average American wage earner three times per pay period what they paid per month five years ago.
There are a lot of services we need or use in everyday life that are provided much more efficiently through open competition in the private sector of our economy. But there are many services we need that cannot by the wildest stretch of the imagination be properly provided by complete private enterprise involvement. Police and fire protection would fall into this category. Can you imagine what kind of justice you would receive if you had to pay private policing agencies to solve your burglaries and/or homicides? How would you like to have to negotiate a deal in order to have the murder of your son or the burglary of your family business investigated?
How easy do you think it would be to get your house fire extinguished if you had to get your fire protection from insurance companies when your house caught on fire. Would decisions ultimately be made by insurance companies as to whether or not it would be worth it for them to send fire trucks to put out your burning house? Would it happen any faster if it were an older home? How many rooms are on fire? Are you covered for a fully involved, smoke and fire showing, blazing inferno? Would you have to talk to the insurance switchboard before the fire protection company decided to even dispatch the trucks? If the insurance company denied payment for whatever reason, would the fire trucks simply not come. Do you get my point?
Yet this is the dilemma we are faced with when it comes to our health care. Health insurance companies have set themselves up with contracts to see that we get health care...up to a point. So, does this actually make sense? Of course not. This isn’t the only thing wrong with our health care system, but it certainly qualifies as one of the most expensive.
Congress doesn’t get it. All of the news coverage on this ongoing healthcare debate shows that congress is simply trying to find a way to have everyone covered. Covered? Don’t they mean insured? By sticking with the health insurance method of providing healthcare we don’t stand a ghost of a chance to minimize the cost of our overall healthcare. Killing the public option is the biggest coup the health insurance lobby could possibly pull off. And congress is still thinking inside the box. How can our healthcare problems be solved by simply changing the way we are insured?
Their (the insurance lobby’s) television ads are filled with rhetoric that amounts to nothing more than a list of talking points aimed at keeping health insurance companies intrenched in a broker position in our healthcare system. All that would accomplish would be to filter our healthcare dollars through an extra set of hands that can pull out a profit after having done nothing to further any advancements in medical science or to increase the quality of our healthcare what so ever. In fact, in view of their track record it can be argued that through the practice of denial of coverage they have significantly diminished the quality of our healthcare system while maintaining healthy profits for themselves.
Before you think of rebutting this, let me ask if you are healthy. Because that is the only group of people out there who think our system is the finest in the world. No one who has had serious health care problems ever argues this point for the simple reason that they are the ones who have experienced denied coverage. Healthy people don’t get denied. They are not the ones who cost the insurance companies any serious money.
Not one country on the world stage that has a free enterprise health care delivery system ranks among the top 25 nations for the quality of their citizens’ healthcare. At last measuring, the United States ranked an embarrassing 40. That placed us behind Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Is leaving Health Insurance companies in the middle of our healthcare delivery chain worth it? Hardly.
This $12.2 billion does not include the cost of all of their employee’s salaries and benefits, which come out of the revenue figure before this profit is even figured out. It also does not include the cost of their multi-story brick buildings in all of the cities where they have buildings. Nor does it include the cost of heating and cooling these massive office enclaves that are often even larger than the very hospitals and medical clinics they have set themselves up to send us to when we need our valuable health care. There is the cost of their computer systems, executive travel and company automobiles and a vast array of costs that the average American cannot even think of that compile normal operating costs. And let’s not forget the cost of lobbying against the current push toward health care reform, which in itself is in the billions of dollars. All of these costs are subtracted from revenue to determine their profits.
These costs are simply the cost of operating a business. But they are not the cost of our actual healthcare. They are, however, compiled on top of the actual cost of our overall healthcare. And they are reflected as part of our healthcare costs. These companies stand firmly between us and our healthcare delivery system. This portion of our healthcare cost comes to a lot more than a mere $12.2 billion. It is a lot more than twice this amount. A typical family health care plan today costs the average American wage earner three times per pay period what they paid per month five years ago.
There are a lot of services we need or use in everyday life that are provided much more efficiently through open competition in the private sector of our economy. But there are many services we need that cannot by the wildest stretch of the imagination be properly provided by complete private enterprise involvement. Police and fire protection would fall into this category. Can you imagine what kind of justice you would receive if you had to pay private policing agencies to solve your burglaries and/or homicides? How would you like to have to negotiate a deal in order to have the murder of your son or the burglary of your family business investigated?
How easy do you think it would be to get your house fire extinguished if you had to get your fire protection from insurance companies when your house caught on fire. Would decisions ultimately be made by insurance companies as to whether or not it would be worth it for them to send fire trucks to put out your burning house? Would it happen any faster if it were an older home? How many rooms are on fire? Are you covered for a fully involved, smoke and fire showing, blazing inferno? Would you have to talk to the insurance switchboard before the fire protection company decided to even dispatch the trucks? If the insurance company denied payment for whatever reason, would the fire trucks simply not come. Do you get my point?
Yet this is the dilemma we are faced with when it comes to our health care. Health insurance companies have set themselves up with contracts to see that we get health care...up to a point. So, does this actually make sense? Of course not. This isn’t the only thing wrong with our health care system, but it certainly qualifies as one of the most expensive.
Congress doesn’t get it. All of the news coverage on this ongoing healthcare debate shows that congress is simply trying to find a way to have everyone covered. Covered? Don’t they mean insured? By sticking with the health insurance method of providing healthcare we don’t stand a ghost of a chance to minimize the cost of our overall healthcare. Killing the public option is the biggest coup the health insurance lobby could possibly pull off. And congress is still thinking inside the box. How can our healthcare problems be solved by simply changing the way we are insured?
Their (the insurance lobby’s) television ads are filled with rhetoric that amounts to nothing more than a list of talking points aimed at keeping health insurance companies intrenched in a broker position in our healthcare system. All that would accomplish would be to filter our healthcare dollars through an extra set of hands that can pull out a profit after having done nothing to further any advancements in medical science or to increase the quality of our healthcare what so ever. In fact, in view of their track record it can be argued that through the practice of denial of coverage they have significantly diminished the quality of our healthcare system while maintaining healthy profits for themselves.
Before you think of rebutting this, let me ask if you are healthy. Because that is the only group of people out there who think our system is the finest in the world. No one who has had serious health care problems ever argues this point for the simple reason that they are the ones who have experienced denied coverage. Healthy people don’t get denied. They are not the ones who cost the insurance companies any serious money.
Not one country on the world stage that has a free enterprise health care delivery system ranks among the top 25 nations for the quality of their citizens’ healthcare. At last measuring, the United States ranked an embarrassing 40. That placed us behind Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Is leaving Health Insurance companies in the middle of our healthcare delivery chain worth it? Hardly.
No comments:
Post a Comment