Private Insurance Cos. Reject Healthcare Reform
4 Points Medical Corps. Argue Favoring the Current Wellness System
The American debate over universal healthcare has received tenacious opposition from the powerful and influential private, for profit healthcare insurance industry. Through extensive advertising and congressional lobbying, the corporations have used Orwellian double speak and misinformation to put forth four major healthcare talking points. They have successfully instilled such fear in the American psyche (of a Public Option) that emotional and occasionally vitriolic exchanges between advocates of change and proponents of the industry have concealed the facts.
- Bloated Bureaucracy
- Competition
- Preference
- Socialism
Proponents of the corporate run system argue government is wasteful and distended. Congressman Wally Herger wrote in The Washington Times on March 25, 2009, “Government hardly has the best track record when it comes to providing efficient, quality service….[simply] take a trip to your local Department of Motor Vehicles….”
Herger’s argument formulates around distain for bureaucracy, with government at Americans’ forefront. However, bureaucracy also exists in the health insurance industry. A proper representation would be to compare government run healthcare to privately run healthcare.
Director and CEO Phil Mattera’s data, presented in the non-profit Corporate Research Project on February 23, 2007, indicates that 16.8% of the revenues generated by the 6 largest health insurance companies went to administrative costs. Furthermore, Nobel Laureate Dr. Paul Krugman quoted July 6, 2009, in the New York Times, a Congressional Budget Office report, “…public Medicare plan are less than 2% of expenditures, compared with approximately 11% of spending by private plans.”
Competition – Double Speak
Government is unfair and private industry can’t compete. The irony is industry pundits argue that government is bloated and inefficient while simultaneously arguing private industry can’t compete with it. The data clearly shows it is private industry that is wasteful and uncompetitive.
Doctors John Holahan and Linda Blumberg wrote in their paper, Is the Public Plan Option a Necessary Part of Health Reform, published in the nonpartisan Urban Institute, “…health insurance [is]…not competitive and… not providing the benefits one would expect from competition, including efficient operations and consequently control over health care costs.”
Right to Choose - Fear
Representative Herger continued, “The bigger this government-run plan gets [it will take]…medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients...putting them in the hands of bureaucrats. “ Creating fear Herger fails to mention this is the current private insurer system – approved treatment, covered medicines, out of network providers, preexisting conditions, maximum stay, policy limits etc.
Mattera wrote, “Lawsuits over the denial of care are being filed against the big insurers….In 2002 a federal judge…granted…claims that managed-care plans systematically denied and delayed payments…Five companies [paid] $650 million in settlements.” Concurrently, federal investigations continue with alleged “patterns of racketeering” by insurers.
Socialism - Fear
A bogyman relic of the Stalinist era - socialized government healthcare! Zoologist and military spouse Mike Dunford wrote on August 6, 2009, in the Questionable Authority that he went to a doctor, at a facility never visited before, without an appointment or medical records. He says, “…I didn’t fill out any insurance forms… [or] hand over any payment….it happened in a health care system operated by the Federal Government. I…used the dreaded socialized...Department of Defense's medical system.”
The nation must ask three essential questions. Is healthcare a right? Should Americans' health supercede American capitalism and can a system be created that allocates cost efficient yet quality medical treatment? Mattera concludes, “…excesses are emblematic of the fundamental conflict in the [health insurance] industry -- the clash between maximizing gains…and the need of its customers for services that are often a matter of life and death.”
* The Corporate Research Project
Grandma at the Hospital
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