Rage against the insurance machine

A really crucial factor in upholding the utterly absurd “health care” system in this country is that the vast majority of employed people probably have little or no sense of how much they’re actually paying for medical insurance.

Using myself as an example, I have very mid-tier medical insurance through my employer, and this is how much I’m paying for medical/dental family coverage (three dependents):

$30,846.

Sounds like kind of a lot doesn’t it? Except that 85% of that cost is in the form of an employer contribution, sent straight to the giant insurance company that the University of Colorado contracts with to provide this benefit. That money — $26,112 to be exact — is pretty much a straight pass through of what would otherwise be part of my salary, but is being sent to the good folks at Anthem instead.

What I get for this is an assurance that I won’t have to pay more than $18,200 out of pocket for medical expenses in the calendar year, meaning that there’s no way I’m going to have to pay more than let’s see here . . . $49,064 for medical care in 2025. And I’m someone with “good” insurance options!

BTW the administrative assistant who I try not to burden with too many dumbass boomer who still can’t figure out how to make a PDF with the copy thingee requests also has this wonderful insurance available to her, although in her case essentially a third of her real salary is being siphoned by an insurance company before it ever hits her paycheck. (I’m not even going to throw Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security taxes into these calculations.)

So if you think people are mad now, imagine how much angrier they would be if they could see this little shell game being pulled off in front of them, as opposed to being hidden in the fine print of their pay advices. Commenter Dr. SteveA:

Regarding the assassination of the Financial Investment Company executive, Brian Thompson: Assassination and other murder is wrong, bad. Period. This guy no doubt was loving father and husband and my condolences to his loved ones. However he was NOT — as much of the press insists on describing him as — a “Healthcare Leader”.

I’ve seen that term used in general media reports and in medical newsletters such as STAT. It’s probably scripted from United’s corporate media team press releases. And it’s being used to then falsely conflate this murder, with attacks on actual healthcare workers… shootings in emergency rooms, assaults while doing their job at vaccination sites, clinics or hospitals; the threats to Dr. Fauci and that sort of thing. The latter are all actually healthcare.

Insurance companies are at best politely referred to as part of the financial services industry and have NOTHING to with providing healthcare (just the opposite) and their CEOs are not healthcare executives, they are financial investment company executives.

By comparison, while I certainly object to many of the policies of drug companies like Pfizer or for-profit hospital chains like HCA, they are in the healthcare business. Insurance companies are not in the healthcare sector; they are in the financial investment sector.

United, Aetna, etc are literally in the business of denying healthcare; full-stop. Their business model is to take money — premiums from individuals or productive businesses providing employee benefits and taxpayer money diverted from Medicare and Medicaid — for the purposes of having a for-profit investment pool. That ius the actual business they are in. It has nothing to do with health or healthcare. Selling the product on the basis that they provide “healthcare coverage” is simply their loss leader. The money they are forced to spend on paying for healthcare is called, by them, medical loss ratio. It remains a fact that the business model is to deny and delay care, and then deny, delay and reduce payments to actual healthcare providers.

Compared to the universal coverage systems that every other rich capitalist democracy around the world have, the uninsurance and under-insurance kill tens of thousands of Americans unnecessarily every year. And unnecessarily impoverishes tens of millions more.

Americans loathe our corporate health insurance system. But most are not fully aware that it does not have to be this way. Universal, not-for-profit, publicly financed healthcare coverage is the baseline norm in every other rich capitalist democracy. It is not a lefty fringe idea that can’t happen.

It has already happened among ever other peer country. Call it single payer, expanded and improved original Medical for All, the New York Health Act, it remains what we strive for in America.

Again my condolences his loved ones. And also to the millions of loved one left behind by the hundreds of thousands killed by the existence of American health insurance companies.