One of Their Own Speaks Out

Read what a former Cigna executive has to say about the illegal business practices of health insurance companies.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec09/health_08-20.html

Propaganda of the Absurd

Health care hypocrisies abound which any reasonable person could dispute.

People oppose health insurance reform because the government will kill the elderly. Concern about killing the elderly would have more validity if we weren’t already killing the young in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where’s the raucous debate or concern over that?

Besides, health insurance companies are already killing people by refusing to refer patients to see doctors other than their primary care physician or their refusal to pay for cancer medication saying it’s not medically necessary.

Another misguided protest slogan is that free markets work best in health insurance. In the health insurance world it’s not a free market. The insurance companies decide how much a procedure, test or office visit is worth. They reimburse at the rates they want to pay. How is that a free market? Can we pay our own allowed rates for food, gas, insurance, utilities and mortgages? That’s out of the question because insurance corporations control the media and delude people into thinking health insurance reform means the free market is under attack. Hardly, the free market has already been attacked by CEO’s like Cigna’s CEO who rakes in eleven million a year.

There’s nothing wrong with making a profit. But making exorbitant profits at the expense of the suffering of others is unconscionable and un-ethical.

Another easily refutable slogan is saying health insurance reform will bankrupt us, we’re already bankrupt. Add up the seven hundred billion we gave to Wall Street and the nine hundred forty seven we’ve given to war, that’s almost equal to this year’s deficit or a trillion dollars over ten years for health insurance reform.

Saying that all these Town Hall Meetings is democracy in action is absurd. It’s the machinations of insurance companies working through former politicians like Richard Armey and his organization FreedomWorks instigating these dog and pony shows. People voicing their opposition to health insurance reform are repeating whey they hear from TV clowns, who get paid millions, to repeat to the public what the corporations want us to hear. If anything, these Town Hall meetings prove that the American people are determined to keep the insurance corporations in control.

And the public option plan that is everyone is so worried about, well not to worry. This public plan won’t be socialist but fascist. After the federal government mandates that all citizens have health insurance like the insurance companies want, the public option plan will be a pool of private insurance companies from which people will choose, essentially pouring more of our tax dollars into the pockets of private insurance companies.

Who’s in control? In the end we’ll get a few bones thrown our way like the elimination of a maximum an insurance company will pay in a lifetime, caps on out of pocket expenses and maybe even a cap on how much insurance companies can raise yearly premiums, but control will remain in the hands of the few, the insurance companies.

Reforming Corporate Masters

Instead of the debate being about reforming “health care”, it should be about an investigation into reforming the health insurance companies, and the reason it isn‘t is because of the insurance company’s control of the politicians and have turned the issue.

The insurance companies make billions because they are allowed to operate using unfair, discriminatory and exclusionary business practices.

We have some of the best medicine in the world, but what good is it if we can’t avail ourselves of it? How many women don’t have mammograms because they can’t afford it? Now, if it’s routine it’s not covered by the health insurance. So we’re paying insurance premiums and paying for the tests. It’s a win-win situation for the insurance companies and a losing situation for the citizens. They have plenty more tricks aimed at denying all claims which in turn allow them to keep the premiums we pay, while refusing to reimburse the doctor. It’s only a matter of time before we run out of doctors. Who wants to practice medicine under a corporate master?

Senator Charles Grassley is against a national health plan that would compete with private insurance companies because government would “take over the market”, which would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. The insurance companies have already “taken over the market” and taken over our politicians, they just don’t publicly admit it.

The July 15 issue of the Washington Spectator reports seven of the top ten political donors to Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, are health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Companies including Schering-Plough, Amgen, Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Healthy competition is necessary to a healthy economy. Maybe that’s why our economy is so sickly, because there’s no competition in either the consumer market, or in our political elections. In the health insurance field, there’s even less competition and no rules. The only ones making up the rules are the insurance companies; and they’re making them up for their own benefit as they go along., and it’s working. Insurance companies control our health care and our politicians.

In America it used to be a two way street, now it’s a one way street with all the advantages money can buy, but especially the cash, flowing to the health insurance companies.