Insurance Companies Are Not "Scum of the Earth"

A response to yesterday's post - "Who Benefits from Billing in Healthcare?" - suggested that insurance companies are the scum of the earth. While most patients, providers and Commenters on prior posts feel that way, we need to aim our guns at the real culprit: the system, and single payer is not the cure.

Insurance companies' primary purpose is to make profit. When they avoid or delay paying for medical care, they make money. That money goes to the people who own the insurance companies (stockholders). Those ultimately responsible are the people who set up the rules under which insurance companies operate: you, me and our representatives. Until we change the system, all the complaints we have as patients and providers are signs the insurance agents are simply doing the job the way we asked them to!

A single payer system has been touted as the answer. Usually this means the government as the single payer. But please remember: governments have financial constraints just like private companies. Whether you call it profit or balancing the budget, making more money or spending less, either way a financial incentive in healthcare means the person who controls the dollar flow will try to keep more and release less.

It is not just the profit motive that we need to remove. It is the financial incentive per se, the rule of the dollar. Problem: that is impossible in a capitalist society, or really in any modern society. Since that is not possible, what can we do? Answer: reconnect the person who spends the dollar with the person whose dollar it is. Reconnect the patient with his or her money and let the patient decide how to spend his or her money. You will economize appropriately, or not. After all, it is your money. You will spend your money wisely or not, and you will bear the consequences. ANY other "cure" will not work.