The Health Insurance Mafia Deserves a Good Screwing

Not so long ago, I lost my health insurance.

The coverage was provided through my small business, that is until the carrier (rhymes with Screw Costs) decided to triple the monthly premium completely at random, leaving me with a common ultimatum: either cancel the plan or spend myself out of business. So I canceled the plan.

Good timing, considering that while riding my bike last year I was hit by a car and, upon being hurled to the street, I fractured my T10 vertebra. (My auto insurance covered my medical expenses free and clear, and I'm gratefully back to riding 80 or so miles a week.)

Coupled with my wife's back surgery from the middle 1990s, though, there are currently two fairly serious preexisting conditions on our family medical records, and so now whenever I shop for health insurance, I'm either turned down or quoted a premium that amounts to a request for voluntary financial rape. There are an array of other craptastical tricks and awfulness dished out by the insurers, but those are the most common walls I run into.

My only other option is to abandon my career and take a job that provides health insurance. As happy as that might make some comment trolls, I'm not in a position to do that either. But even if I did, there aren't any guarantees that the insurer wouldn't deny coverage that I paid for, along with a mélange of various other screwings the health insurance industry routinely gets away with.

This story isn't unusual, unfortunately, though I doubt other stories too often involve ricocheting off of a moving vehicle onto hard pavement with nothing but a helmet and garish road cycling regalia to break the fall.

So needless to say, I'm anxiously anticipating the public health insurance option -- as long as it's not crapped up with triggers or trap doors.

Actually, "anticipating" doesn't suffice to define my mood right now. I need it. My family needs it. Because the private health insurance companies have essentially told me that either they want all of my money, or nothing. And if I were to acquiesce to their thievery, I could once again count on premiums randomly being jacked up and, as so many Americans have experienced, coverage being outright denied, all for the sake of profit margins, stock quotes and obscene executive salaries.

A government healthcare plan, on the other hand, would be specifically tailored for stories like mine, and it's my only real chance of having health insurance anytime soon.

In addition to putting the "insurance" back into "health insurance," the public plan would force the private insurers to figure out how to compete -- or face bankruptcy. How excellent would that be for a change? The health insurance companies under financial pressure brought on by a competitive entity that we own.

Honestly, I hope they choke on it. I can think of no other American industry that more closely resembles a criminal shakedown of the public than the health insurers.

Even calling it "insurance" is a sick joke. Insurance implies a guarantee, and no matter what we pay, there are never any guarantees. I propose replacing the word "insurance" with the word "maybe?" -- including the question mark -- as in "health maybe?" Maybe they'll pay when we get sick. Maybe they won't randomly hike our monthly premium by 30 percent. Maybe they'll cover our preexisting conditions without gouging us -- that is if they agree to cover us at all. Maybe they won't let our family members die after refusing coverage.

The entire business model of the health insurance industry is based around a basic truth: people have a natural will to live, and in many cases we'll go broke paying someone to prevent death. The cost of healthcare is so expensive -- in some cases conspiratorial by design -- that we need these other companies to step in and help us pay for it. That's the whole scam. Pay or die.

Consequently, the basic animalistic fear of pain and death coerces us to keep paying whatever we have to pay, and allows the health insurance companies total latitude to get away with their criminal enterprise. (It's a similar fear that keeps us hooked on a cocktail of prescription drugs even though the freakish excretory side effects are often worse than the ailments themselves.)

The public option is an escape hatch. A light in the tunnel. It's actual insurance and not some sort of twisted form of legalized Mafioso extortion.

The Republicans along with the several cowardly Democrats who oppose the public option, in addition to mostly being bought off by the dons who run the industry, are actually preventing competition when they otherwise claim to embrace it. They're preventing you from having a fair choice in this thing.

Competition is what capitalism is all about, yes? The spirit of competition mandates that the marketplace -- you and I -- have the flexibility to move towards the path of least resistance, thus competition is generated, prices are controlled, service improves and the companies that can't compete are killed off. If we don't like one form of crap on a stick, we can stop buying it in lieu of better, cheaper crap on a stick. Choice drives competition and competition drives the economy, right?

As it stands now, there are no choices so there's no real competition.

If we opt to bail on our insurance company because we think they're being unfair or generally screwing us, there are no guarantees the next place will be better or cheaper, or that they'll even have us. And what if we developed an injury or illness on the previous policy? So our tendency is to stay put or, like me, roll the dice.

We're very literally trapped and we have no leverage. We're effed coming and going. We're in a compromised, boxed-in, no win situation and the health insurance companies, along with the politicians they're buying off, know it. So they're exploiting our captivity (and our basic will to live) for profit and political gain.

Tell me again how this is an industry that needs to be defended and protected. Tell me how this isn't organized crime.

Ultimately, the public healthcare option has the potential to end the systematic screwing. It'll force la cosa nostra to compete -- to become more efficient and less criminally coercive. If they can't or if they refuse, then too goddamn bad. Or maybe they'll actually do the right thing and become better than the public option and everyone will want to buy in.

Yeah, that last thing won't happen. After all, there are obscene CEO paychecks to support.

* Ron Williams - Aetna - Total Compensation: $24,300,112.
* H. Edward Hanway - CIGNA - Total Compensation: $12,236,740.
* Angela Braly - WellPoint - Total Compensation: $9,844,212.
* Dale Wolf - Coventry Health Care - Total Compensation: $9,047,469.
* Michael Neidorff - Centene - Total Compensation: $8,774,483.
* James Carlson - AMERIGROUP - Total Compensation: $5,292,546.
* Michael McCallister - Humana - Total Compensation: $4,764,309.
* Jay Gellert - Health Net - Total Compensation: $4,425,355.
* Richard Barasch - Universal American - Total Compensation: $3,503,702.
* Stephen Hemsley - UnitedHealth Group - Total Compensation: $3,241,042.

These people are, of course, compensated based upon the potential profits they're able to generate for their respective shareholders. And those profits are generated both by charging ever-increasing premiums and by refusing to pay out. Put another way: screwing you. And, by the way, while they're screwing you they're locked into the recession-proof tobacco industry -- investing $4.5 billion dollars in a product that's been proven to kill you.

Seriously. Good people.

The health insurance companies and their guardians in Congress can't be allowed to win this one. The Obama administration is giving you and me -- our government, accountable to us -- a chance to compete with the health insurance crime families. We have to draw the line here. There can be no capitulation or compromise on public health insurance. More than any other issue on the table right now, this is about our lives and, in a very serious way, our human dignity. And at no other time in recent history have we had a similar such opportunity for victory in a system that is transparently designed to otherwise screw us.

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!

Comments

[tandrmcdonald]

Once again, Bob Cesca nails it, only this time there is a definite bittersweet quality to the article. I share his outrage but not his skill at putting it in words. Thank you, again, Mr. Cesca.
Gramma Rose

[maddocbrown]

People are choosing the free market option. In this option, they choose not to purchase health insurance even on the fear of death. Granted this is not hitting the streets protesting and wielding rocks and molotov's cocktails, but this is as courageous as Americans can get without giving up too too much. If more people went for the no-insurance option, let's say 30% over the present 16% of the population (which is high, I grant) the insurance scheme would become to expensive for the companies and investors or else we might get swifter government action.

[BambooHarvester]

... with no lube . . .
~

[lcarliner]

Bob Cessa is a victim of a common tactic of the private health insurance industry. It would have an initial offering of a new product offering priced temptingly low (if your medical service utilization record is "squeaky clean" and your health is perfect. This is no as the self-destructing policy offering. After a short period, the product offering would be closed to additional enrollees, when the desired size has been reached. As medical claims inevitably come in, the premiums would start to climb steeply in short order. The members with unblemished health system utilization records would drop out, and enroll in another similar product offering, provided that their health condition remains perfect. In the meantime The remaining subscribers would be eventually forced to drop out, but now would become member of the increasing numbers of the insurable!

What any consumer needs to do is to FIND OUT if enrollment by additional members will be stopped and when, provided he/she is able to get that information from the company BEFORE enrolling!

[lcarliner]

The private health insurance industry has the ethics of ENRON energy traders. Senator Chuck Grassley is such a "bleeding heart" advocate of those demented businesses. There happens to be a company in his state of Iowa, headquartered in Des Moines that DESERVES to be "crowded out" of business. That company is American Republic Insurance. Back in 1972 to 1973, that company was offering a rather garbagedy policy named "Americare" Because of my mild to moderate ulcerative colitis, the underwriters would not touch me "with a ten-foot colonoscope" but would sell me life insurance at inflated rate. It would, however, issue my then wife health insurance, but with her kidney condition weaseled out, even though no company would issue her life insurance. Because of the pricing outrage, the life insurance policy had to be replaced. The agent, in a desperate effort to keep me from switching told me of an article that appeared in a company publication in which the underwriters were chortling on how "cut and clever" they were in that they would issue health insurance for a healthy skydiver, but not life insurance! This attitude speaks for itself!

[LightningJoe]

The meat:

No self(and ONLY "self")-respecting capitalist will shed favorable light on a plan that would cut into their profits. The watershed came during the Clinton Health Push, when Mr. Clinton effectively sold his and Hillary's plan out, when they had the liberal momentum, and made the promise of healthcare for all, into a cash cow for HMOs.

Now The leeches are entrenched, and have a stranglehold on "our" representatives in government, too. This is what happens, when you avoid the tough choices, for short-term peace.

Get it straight: moneyed interests will NEVER do things that benefit someone else, if it means the "loss" of THEIR potential profits. That's exactly why we need to first, STOP BELIEVING THE LIES, and second, send the liars to the woodshed.

They encourage a short memory, on our part; and if we oblige them, they win.

----
Stop watching tv. It's rotting your brain.

[rainjustice]

Healthcare reform and the insurance industry: As Usual, "The Large Print Giveth and the Small Print Taketh Away."

Single-payer now!

[whitherlock]

What about an international non-profit like an overlay
Aking away their business scrutinizes them
After reading captastic, I lost interest int the articles. (I sugesst scrutinizing 32 large firs simultaneously;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1v1m4DhucY&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQmuJvNYHzY&NR=1
http://www.nndb.com/lists/502/000063313/

[BonnieJW]

"I can think of no other American industry that more closely resembles a criminal shakedown of the public than the health insurers. " How about Payday loans?

[raker]

Channel 7 Boston, loyal soldiers in the neocon army, just ran a segment saying that Democrats want to "make Uncle Sam the family physician." Loathsome lying bastards.

[Muley]

Attention: Chicago Single Payer Activists and Supporters-

President Barak Obama will be speaking at the AMA annual meeting sometime on Monday.

Single payer activists and supporters plan to use the occasion to demonstrate in favor of single-payer universal health care.

When: Monday June 15, 11:00 am

Where: Tribune Tower, 435 North Michigan Avenue, near the American Gothic sculpture

The location is some distance from the hotel where the AMA meeting is being held to prevent demonstrators from having to deal with security problems.

If you believe "Health Care For ALL. Not Some. Not Most. ALL" please show your support!

[schatsie]

double those numbers, you don't really think that their bonuses, stock options, expense accounts and pensions are included there, do you?

[hopeforchangenow]

We need to cut off the money and influence from the lobbyists. We need action now to negate their influence. We need officials in Washington who have the balls to do what they were elected to do. We would not have this fight over single payer health care if those we elected would do as their constituents mandate and not as the the lobbyists paid them. They literally cut off any chance of changes in the off shore deposits of profits. Why are you and I paying more so they can hide their profits from being taxed?? Those taxes would pay for single payer health. We need to stop the pharmaceutical, insurance, big hospital and Rupert Murdoch (yes, him and his empire - See Robert Reich on Bill Moyer's PBS show) lobbyists. Murdoch uses his Fox Network to enrage those right wingers into believing they don't want single payer health because it is socialism. I still say it is time to create a movement to remove ALL benefits from ALL federal employees - elected, retired and otherwise. If you and I are unable to have health, dental and eye insurance there is not way that they should.

[stillfresh]

Try them all under RICO laws. This is a racket. They are racketeers.

[LightningJoe]

And that was the plan from the start.

[BlueTide]

The public obtion is needed because individual mandates that Congress is proposing will increase demand for health care. The extra demand for health care will drive up health care cost, as it did in Massachussetts. In fact, individual mandates on the national level will dirve up prices much more than it did in Massachusets. Price controls have no support in America. Therefore, the only way to keep health costs from skyrocketing is a public option. I hope that Democrats will articulate this message, which they have yet to make.