The following was written by Nancy R. Terry and lifted from MEDSCAPE Today, it offers some interesting & enlightening opinions:
"Commercial, for-profit health insurance is one of the greatest Ponzi schemes ever foisted on the public," says a family medicine physician. "The executives are the ones that benefit to the detriment of everyone else. How else does the president of one of the largest insurance companies get to be a billionaire? By being at the top of the pyramid of companies' and individuals' premium payments."
"The single most important factor in the atrociously high cost of healthcare in the United States is the rapacious, money-hungry insurance companies and their fat cat CEOs," comments an Medscape's Physician Connect (MPC) contributor.
"The damage that the insurance companies do is not limited to the salaries of the CEOs," says another contributor. "They waste the time and resources of healthcare workers, institutions, and patients. They are clearly a negative, wasteful element in healthcare today that needs to be heavily regulated, changed, or eliminated."
Physicians point to a number of supposedly routine practices of the health insurance companies that cry out for oversight. One MPC participant remarks that health insurance companies increase their premiums even as they decrease coverage. Another discussant notes that insurers typically burden physicians and patients with filing requirements as part of a strategy to delay or deny legitimate claims. According to one contributor, some companies frequently change their coding schemas to avoid paying legitimate claims. "The insurance companies make billions of dollars in profit each year," says one MPC commentator, "and they do it by limiting care, denying claims, limiting contracts, and limiting reimbursements."
The practice of systematically denying legitimate reimbursement claims by insurance companies has been the focus of an ongoing investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. In January 2009, Cuomo reached an agreement with UnitedHealth Group, Inc. that the insurer would shut down its controversial Ingenix database and pay $50 million to fund a nonprofit, independent database for the purpose of establishing fair compensation rates. The Ingenix database, which was owned by UnitedHealth, served all the major insurers and, according to The Wall Street Journal, skewed downward the "usual and customary" rates of out-of-network insurance reimbursements through "faulty data collection, poor pooling procedures, and lack of audits, thus forcing customers to pay more out of their own pockets for healthcare." In February, WellPoint, Inc., the nation's largest health insurer, agreed to Cuomo's request to pay $10 million to help fund the new database. WellPoint is the sixth insurance company to make such an agreement with Cuomo's office. As quoted by New York Daily News, Cuomo commented on the insurers' use of the Ingenix database, saying, "This is as egregious a situation as I've seen, of a virtual monopoly."
Is health insurance a scam? The 100 MPC postings in response to that question are unanimous in their assertion that the health insurance industry needs reform. Yet, MPC contributors are divided as to the extent and nature of that reform.
"The health insurance system is so profoundly flawed," says one MPC contributor, "that the only solution is a nonprofit, single-payer healthcare system." Other MPC contributors contend that a single-payer system would harbor its own set of problems. Comments a psychiatrist, "I would rather have evil insurance companies than absolute power concentrated in a single agency. If you have a complaint about an insurance company, you can complain to the regulators and drop the insurance. If you have a complaint about the government, you are screwed."
Advocates of a single-payer system singled out Physicians for a National Health Program as a resource outlining the salient features of a single-payer system. Similarly, several advocates for reorganization of the for-profit insurance system directed readers to Real Health Reform, which proposes, among other healthcare reforms, the restructuring of private health insurance into a regulated utility.
Other contributors less concerned about the overall structure of the industry advocate that health insurance coverage should more closely resemble other types of insurance. "When we protect our house and car, the purpose has traditionally been to provide a safety net if the unforeseen happens to us," points out an endocrinologist. "Health insurance is not that way. We have come to expect medical insurance to subsidize ordinary expenses, like our prescriptions and our office visits and any number of interventions that are not in themselves financially devastating, the way an auto collision or a home fire would be." A family medicine physician comments, "Health insurance needs to be made into real insurance that only covers catastrophic events. Then it will be cheaper for everyone."
Evident throughout the postings is a sense of frustration. One participant comments, "The people are not happy with health insurance, the physicians and allied personnel are not happy with health insurance. What is the government waiting for?"
Some MPC contributors refuse to take a wait-and-see attitude. They advocate that physicians who are disgruntled with the health insurance industry should effectively boycott health insurance.
"We need to immediately stop taking all third-party payments," says an MPC contributor.
"Bill patients at the time of service," advises another contributor. "Provide them with the invoice and tell them the truth, the larger truth -- that you, the doctor, are not in the business of bandying about with insurance clerks and petty tyrants whose motivation is nothing but to frustrate payment and cost you valuable time and energy, which is duly relegated to patient care."
"Stop making contracts with HMOs, hospitals, and health insurance," recommends a neurologist. "Return to cash payment. When other doctors see it works for them the way it has for many, guess what? The yoyos who keep your insurance clerk and billing staff on hold for 2 hours asking for notes and records will be collecting pink slips."
But the question remains: will the President's health reform initiative take on the health insurance industry? MPC contributors hope the answer to that question is yes. "Our healthcare system is broken largely due to the insurance companies," comments an MPC contributor. A urologist agrees, "Only through insurance reform can we begin the process of real healthcare reform."
Real solutions for a financial recovery which do not cost a single tax dollar.
This is a summary of our initial post, For the full content please see the same title in the March 2009 archives. Please click this link, the full article will appear at the bottom of this page!
It's simple, much if not all of what ails us economically can be solved without costing one thin dime, that is what we mean by a ZERO COST RECOVERY.
Many of today's ills have come from easily reversible causes, here are a few to start you thinking:
- The Bible condemns usury (sort of); whether or not you are religious, this make great sense.
- "A Free & Independent Press is the Cornerstone of Democracy". I don't know who first said it, but they were spot on. Today's media does not hold the rich and powerful accountable, it is owned by them; they are at the core of the problem.
- Food costs have more than doubled, yet the family farmer is struggling while large corporate farmers are getting huge subsidies. One solution would be enacting anti-trust legislation that forbids the huge conglomerates which are so dominant in critical industries from operating at more than one level in the manufacturing and distribution chain.... Grow it, process it, distribute it or retail it - choose one!
- The price of oil at the well head is dramatically different from the price we see quoted on the TV each night. The difference is created by speculators in the commodities markets (the same holds true for food and other vital commodities). Force the CFTC to re-institute the commodities speculation guideline that were in place prior to 1990.
- Big Pharma spends far more on marketing and lobbyists than on R&D, some say the figure is twice as much. How much do you think this adds to what your prescriptions cost? Lobby our legislators to allow Medicare to negotiate drug costs with their manufacturers and watch prices fall to the levels enjoyed in most other countries.
- Health care costs are skyrocketing yet Physicians pay has decreased dramatically. How much do you think the near monopolies in Health Insurance and HMO's contribute to this?
It's simple, much if not all of what ails us economically can be solved without costing one thin dime, that is what we mean by a ZERO COST RECOVERY.
Many of today's ills have come from easily reversible causes, here are a few to start you thinking:
- The Bible condemns usury (sort of); whether or not you are religious, this make great sense.
- Big Banks don't work for America or Americans (or anyone else for that matter). Consolidation was touted as a way to lower costs, provide better service and more affordable fees to customers. Can anyone show me an example where these promised economies of scale came to life? How about the lower fees and better service?
- Bigger is not better, that is why anti-trust legislation was enacted. Today's financial crisis was brought to a head by the unvarnished greed of the giant banks, financial institutions and corporations with the complicity of the majority of our legislators, it is just that simple.
- The "Free market" is not the cause of this problem, the fact that it has been castrated, prostituted and redefined by the greedy is. "Free market" does not mean a market without rules, or domination by the richest and most powerful. Without meaningful competition, free markets cannot, and do not, exist - period.
Rollback, update and aggressively enforce meaningful anti-trust & financial sector regulations and the root cause will be eliminated. How about requiring a binding contract guaranteeing that all consumer beneficial promises be a part of all mergers and acquisitions? To be effective, it should include an onerous non compliance clause!
- "A Free & Independent Press is the Cornerstone of Democracy". I don't know who first said it, but they were spot on. Today's media does not hold the rich and powerful accountable, it is owned by them; they are at the core of the problem.
- Food costs have more than doubled, yet the family farmer is struggling while large corporate farmers are getting huge subsidies. One solution would be enacting anti-trust legislation that forbids the huge conglomerates which are so dominant in critical industries from operating at more than one level in the manufacturing and distribution chain.... Grow it, process it, distribute it or retail it - choose one!
- The price of oil at the well head is dramatically different from the price we see quoted on the TV each night. The difference is created by speculators in the commodities markets (the same holds true for food and other vital commodities). Force the CFTC to re-institute the commodities speculation guideline that were in place prior to 1990.
- Big Pharma spends far more on marketing and lobbyists than on R&D, some say the figure is twice as much. How much do you think this adds to what your prescriptions cost? Lobby our legislators to allow Medicare to negotiate drug costs with their manufacturers and watch prices fall to the levels enjoyed in most other countries.
- Health care costs are skyrocketing yet Physicians pay has decreased dramatically. How much do you think the near monopolies in Health Insurance and HMO's contribute to this?
-Corporations are NOT People. Our Founding Fathers did not think so when they formed our nation, why are we allowing it now?
Monopolies and oligopolies are the root causes of our problems. Cure these ills, and our financial woes will evaporate WITHOUT COSTING ONE DIME.
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