Universal Shell Game

by Stephen Fleischman

Talk about clout! The power of the Health Insurance Industry in the United States is staggering. If they were sent to Iraq, they’d win the war in a day.

Most of the candidates in the horse race for the 2008 presidential nomination are doing a Ring Around the Rosie, an old, fabled, nursery rhyme that dates back to the days of the bubonic plague, when a red rash ring was a symptom of the disease.

“My health care program is better than yours!” the candidates shout at each other as their campaigns ring around the nation.

The Democrats are particularly vociferous. Each claims that their plan will give the people Universal Health Insurance. Of course, all their plans are about the same, with minor differences, all feeding into the maw of the Health Insurance Industry, which we shall call HI or bubonic plague.

What are the candidates actually talking about? Listen to this! Individual mandates. That means people without health insurance will be forced to buy it. It will be compulsory, like auto insurance is for car owners. But, who will they buy it from? The health insurance companies, of course.

And if they can’t afford it? Well, there’s always Uncle Sam. The Democrats lay that one off on the government. If a family can’t afford the insurance, the government will subsidize the family by paying part of the cost. What a bonanza for the HI, a bubonic plague for the rest of us.

There is only one, among the candidates, in either party—Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, who has the guts to grab the tiger by the tail and use those dreaded words: SINGLE PAYER, the key words representing a true Universal Health Plan, where the government collects the taxes and is the single payer for all health services. Every civilized industrial country has such a plan. That’s the very nature of the concept: “insurance”. All for one. One for all. We all put money into the big pot, through premiums or taxes, call it what you will—the greater the number of participants (why not the whole country) the wider the pool, the less cost to the individual subscribers—and when we need it, we get all necessary health care services free of charge. Is that so hard to understand?

In a stroke, this would make America’s health insurance industry (the most inefficient organism in the world) obsolete. What we have now is a multiplicity of employer, individual and government plans, a wilderness of paper work, sky-high administrative costs, increasing co-pays and cut-backs in care. Can’t we get rid of that? Not so easy. It’s a Catch 22. Don’t mess with the sacred cow.

Back in 1993, in the salad days of the Clinton administration, Bill and Hillary, the Bonnie and Clyde of politics, tried to construct a government- aided health care program that would fit into the existing system, otherwise known as “a Rube Goldberg”. They stirred up the hornets’ nest.

Harry and Louise, a nice middle-aged couple, stars of the television commercial sponsored by the health insurance industry sat around the homey kitchen table, talking about the threat of “socialized medicine” hanging over the nation like the sword of Damocles.

Hillary got her head handed to her. She set the single payer movement back a generation. Now, she’s trying it again, this time as candidate for the presidency.

Just this week, the Securities and Exchange Commission pulled back the curtain a bit so that we could get a glimpse of the mountains of loot and corruption that exists in the health insurance industry.

As reported in The New York Times, (12-08-07) Dr. William W. McGuire, the former chief executive of UnitedHealth Group, the largest conglomerate of health insurance companies in the country, has agreed to give back $418 million to settle claims related to back-dated stock options. He will also return $198 million to UnitedHealth shareholders. However, he will be allowed to keep stock options valued at $800 million.

“These forfeitures,” says The New York Times, “are the first time regulators have successfully employed corporate governance rules put in place after the collapse of Enron that force executives to disgorge ill-gotten gains.”

This gives you an inkling of the kind of money CEOs of health insurance companies walk away with—money that should be going into payment for your medical care.

Doctors don’t like the present system any more than their patients do. For years, the American Medical Association fought pre-paid medical plans, calling them “socialized medicine”, although the government had nothing to do with them. The AMA didn’t anticipate the sneak attack of the insurance industry.

The health insurance companies gobbled up these pre-paid medical plans, calling them Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). They readily accepted Medicare and Medicaid, sopping up all that loose cash. They turned the HMOs into their opposite—not “socialized medicine” for the people but corporate welfare for the insurance companies. Through the years, they increased premiums and cut services, raking in billions in profits. The doctors allowed themselves to be co-opted and blind-sided. They allowed the pre-paid plans to get away from them. Their fear of “socialized medicine” dimmed their vision. Instead of “socialized medicine” they got privatized sweat-shops where some doctors can’t make medical decisions without the approval of an HMO bureaucrat.

Health Insurance has now become a major issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. Isn’t there anyone else in the campaign or in Congress, besides Dennis Kucinich, who is willing to take on this health industry behemoth?

You may find the answer to that question in the amount the health insurance industry is contributing to the campaigns of the candidates.