The Health Care Question Should Be About the Insurance Industry Stranglehold,

Not a Government Take-over"


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/the-question-is-not-a-gov_b_278970.html

by Robert Creamer


As Congress reconvenes, Republicans and insurance companies are trying their hardest to frame the health care debate as President Obama's attempt to engineer a "government takeover" of the nation's health care system.

In fact the real question is whether Congress will allow the big private health insurance companies to consolidate their current stranglehold over our health care.


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With private health insurance companies like these, average people have no recourse. They can't go to their Congressman and demand that rates be controlled as they can with Medicare. They can't throw insurance executives out of office, as they can if they don't like a politicians vote on a tax increase.

And let's not pretend that the "free market" forces these companies to compete for our business by providing the lowest prices and best service. In fact, the health insurance industry is anything but competitive.

An AMA survey, released in late January, gives a score gauging the concentration of the commercial market for 314 metropolitan statistical areas. The report showed 94% had commercial markets that were "highly concentrated" by standards set by the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.

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Let's remember that insurance companies are exempt from the Federal Anti-Trust Laws.

Nor are they subject to market concentration limits like those imposed by the Federal Communications Commission to prevent the domination of one media company in a particular area. It is certainly important to prevent one company from controlling the messages that are broadcast into our homes. But isn't it equally important to prevent one or two companies from controlling our access to health care?

You can see the results of this concentration in the marketplace. In the second quarter, one of the largest insurers, United Health Care Group lost 410,000 customers -- largely because the recession caused massive layoffs. Unbelievably, its profits actually doubled to $860 million. The main reason: it simply raised its prices.

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No, the private health insurance industry likes things just the way they are. They want to be free to continue raising prices almost four times faster than wages - so their profits can soar in good times and bad. They want to be free to pay their CEO's an average of $8.5 million per year - 21 times more than the CEO of the United States, the President.

They want to continue employing armies of people who do nothing but reject claims - not because that contributes one bit to the health care of their customers, but because it raises their bottom lines.

They want to keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing and administration because that also helps them make more money, though it is simply waste when it comes to overall spending on health care.

Remember health insurance companies don't deliver one iota of health care to patients. They are middlemen who skim off a chunk of every health care dollar that passes through their hands. They have no incentive whatsoever to improve the health of their clientele or control overall health care spending in our economy - only to increase their bottom line and the salaries and bonuses of the executives who are now empowered to - in essence - make life and death decisions.

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Remind your Members of Congress that none of them took an oath to protect the profits of private insurance companies.