Mark Gimein, writing in Slate, argues against blaming the health insurance companies for rising health care costs:
Myth No. 1: Insurers’ profits are responsible for our health care costs.
This is the most pervasive and most crowd-pleasing of the health care myths. The profits of the big health insurance companies are central to the rhetoric of the health care debate, figuring heavily in the Democratic primary campaign. Barack Obama’s platform includes a promise to force insurers to spend enough on care “instead of keeping exorbitant amounts for profits and administration.” Michael Moore, the director of Sicko, has hammered the point repeatedly, thundering about how insurers maximize profits by “providing as little care as possible.”
The problem here is that between them the five biggest health insurers—UnitedHealthCare, Wellpoint, Aetna, Humana, and Cigna—which cover 105 million members, last year had profits between them of $11.8 billion. This is not a small number; these are very profitable companies. But total U.S. health care costs last year were in the area of $2.3 trillion.
So, with a membership that included a little more than half of the Americans covered by private insurance, these five insurers’ profits came to 0.5 percent of total health care costs. (One interesting point of comparison: In 2006, the income earned by the 50 biggest nonprofit hospitals alone came out at $4 billion.)
The full article, which debunks two more myths, can be found here.
My experience living in countries with heavily subsided medical care (Australia) and the experience of friends and colleagues who have lived in Belgium or France is that socialized medicine works very well. At some point, the proof is in the pudding, as the Brits say. If the US free market system gives us healthcare costs that rise so fast that they outstrip wage increases for many workers, something’s very wrong. In many countries, women of the working class who have children spend 3 days to a week in the hospital recuperating whereas US hospitals charge the price of a small car for such a visit. There’s something wrong, simple as that. If free market incentives were going to solve the US healthcare crisis, they would have done so by now.
I actually have an insider point of view here, and since I am not working for a health care related company I can actually state my point.
Insurance IS the problem with our health care system… it is simple, follow the money, follow what is the profit making machine in not telling you and be wary of statistics that do not account for the cost of the un-insured to the health care providers.
I worked inside of them and they have turned health care into a pure business model and the people without means to afford insurance practically do not fit into their model so they are simply ignored.
A lot of people talk about patients being the victims, when the real victims of the health care system are the un-insured.
Karlo,
Whether socialized healthcare works or not is more than mere ’satisfaction’. There are many other things behind the scenes. Things like: Drug inventions, medical technology, waiting times, access to quality doctors, etc…all things that the USA far exceeds all other countries. In addition, because other countries price control their drugs and the United States does not, in many ways, those countries ‘cheap’ costs are paid for by US citizens. So its a facade…its not as cheap as what you may think.
Then of course, comes the problem that with each passing year, it seems the french, british, and canadian healthcare systems are getting worse - at the very time politicians are trying to move us in that direction.
logtar,
You are right - health insurance companies do not take people who cannot afford it. But that is why we have medicaid. Medicaid is, by definition, government provided health care for the poor. But medicaid sucks, you say? That is exactly why I don’t want more government control of healthcare.
HIspanic Pundit - why do you have your comments configured in such a way that commenters are represented, not by their own avatars, but by the “left lane ends - merge right” sign?
The Left Lane Ends avatar is only the default avatar…if you have your own, it should appear.
And I thought it was some complex plot to undermine “Swerve Left.” (:
Hahaha…no way brother, Swerve Left is very welcome around here.
I do have my own, but it never appears on your blog. Or do I have to get a special one to work on your blog?
I use gravatar @ http://www.gravatar.com