Eleven Ugly Truths About Health and the Health Insurance Industry in Our Country

There are several incontrovertible truths about health and care in our country:

1. Human beings can and do get sick.  Some more sick than others.  These are simple facts of life.

2. We are at the mercy of our health insurance company to get our health care paid for; from doctors' visits to medicines to hospital stays, without their prior consent we cannot get our care.

3. If you are employed, both you and your employer pay for your policies.  Sometimes you have both a health and a disability policy through your employer.

4. Paying your premiums absolutely does not guarantee that the insurance company will uphold their end of the contract (purposely written in vague language) and pay out a claim.

5. Your health insurance company can dump you at any time.  This practice is called rescission.

6. Your health insurance company can raise your premiums at any time, and hikes in premiums have outpaced wages and inflation.  If you are self-employed and cannot afford a rate hike on your policy, you lose your coverage.  This practice is called purging.  You may still make too much money to qualify for government help, in which case you are simply out-of-luck and health care.

7. Profits are the only motivating factor for an insurance company. Money is made by the company when they deny a claim, such as I have documented on this blog, or when they delay in paying a claim.

8. We are the only industrialized nation in the world without a National Plan to ensure the health and well-being of our people, to give us the ability to build enterprises and our own wealth because we are chained to any "job" just so we can get some form of health insurance.

9. The insurance industry is immune to federal anti-trust regulations making things like collusion and price fixing, practices they can and do employ.  Sometimes they get caught, most times they do not, thanks to their immunity from these laws.  See the McCarran Ferguson Act of 1945 for more information.

10. Over 45,000 Americans die each year due to lack of health insurance.  Why does this matter?  Because the health insurance industry is the gate-keeper to our medical care.  We should be able to go see a doctor or receive treatment without fear of losing our retirement funds or our homes or having to declare bankruptcy, but we cannot because we are all (from consumer to provider) slaves to an industry whose only motivation is to secure profits for their shareholders.

11. Health care costs are out of control, thanks in huge part to the health insurance industry.  The blame rests squarely with the insurers as they are not only the gate-keepers to our care, they are also the gate-keepers to reimbursing doctors, hospitals and pharmacies.  Deals are struck with all the providers, but only after the insurance profit margins are in place.

Finally, if being in the insurance business is so risky and expensive, as Ms. Angela Braly of WellPoint stated before Congress on February 24 of this year, then why do WellPoint, CIGNA, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna and Humana stay in the business?  Why not close up shop and forget it? 

Why bother with such a risky and expensive undertaking as collecting billions in premiums?  If the profit margins are so low, as they claim, why bother spending the countless millions of dollars in lobbying fees to keep everything the same as it is now?  Why do they purchase corporate jets, have vast real estate holdings and give their executives such generous compensation packages if the business is just so hard to keep profitable?  Why keep at it?

Because the business model of collecting ever-rising premiums for doing absolutely nothing is an extremely lucrative one and they all make an immorally obscene amount of money from infirmity, from the sick and the dying in this country of ours.  That is a very ugly truth.

The image above was found here.