CIGNA insider comes clean on the health insurance industry
Author: COD From http://www.odonnellweb.com • Jul 12th, 2009Category: Blog Entries.Local, Politics
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The comments at Metafilter are pretty good too.
There is way too much here for me to process. However, his overall point goes back to something I realized a few weeks ago. I mentioned it on Facebook, don’t think I ever did a blog post on it though. The reason that for profit health insurance doesn’t work is that the incentives are not aligned properly. Publicly traded companies exist to maximize shareholder profit. That is how the system works. It works pretty damn well for most things, but not for health care. Insurance companies maximize profit by minimizing how much they payout on claims. Insurance plans are purchased by companies that are trying to balance offering a competitive benefits package to attract high quality employees with minimizing costs. Insurance companies want to sell insurance plans for as much as possible while payout out as few claims as possible.
Do you notice what is missing there? There is absolutely no concern or even recognition of you. Nobody involved gives a damn about you.
I’m not saying that a single payer system would be overwhelmed with personal care. A bureaucrat is a bureaucrat, government or large corporation, it doesn’t really matter. Neither has your best interests at heart. But at least the government bureaucrat in theory works for you as a taxpayer. The insurance companies don’t even pretend to answer to the consumer anymore. They are working in conjunction with our employers to shift more and more of the bloated cost of the current system onto us.
Back in the early ’90s, or back during the time that the Clinton plan was being debated, 95 cents out of every dollar was sent, you know, on average was used by the insurance companies to pay claims. Last year, it was down to just slightly above 80 percent.
Also, I can’t help but wonder about how the economy might be supercharged if keeping your job to maintain health insurance was no longer an issue. Millions of people would be able to follow their dreams and start companies. The increased job mobility between companies would likely increase overall pay levels and corporate America wouldn’t have the health insurance trump card that allows them to neglect other issues related to compensation and the work-home lifestyle balance.
Republican trumped up horror stories aside, the cold hard truth is that every other civilized country in the world provide health services for its citizens. Republicans claim to be patriotic, yet at the same time they claim to believe that we are too ignorant and too stupid to do something already being done by Canada. I mean, come on people, we are talking about Canada here!
Just kidding Ron and Andrea
The proper American attitude here should be Screw Canada. Anything they can do, we can do better. If Canada provides comprehensive health care for its citizens,we’ll go one better.
Free boob jobs and Viagra for all! Hell yeah, America First baby
















