Photo by Juhan Sonin
A pharmaceutical company raises the price of the EpiPen from $100 to $600+ and increases CEO pay from $5 Million to $19 Million. An insurance company withdraws from the Affordable Care Act exchanges with the pretext it is losing money as opposed to admitting it was honoring its threat for not getting its merger. A recent report debunks the lie that drug prices are necessarily high to promote the development of new medicines. Ever increasing deductibles make standard health insurance policies seem like catastrophic health plans. Many healthy people are opting to pay the penalty instead of getting health insurance.
Each of the realities mentioned above is the manifestation of serious flaws in the Affordable Care Act.The inability to regulate or bargain for better drug prices allows companies to fleece consumers. The absence of a public option gives insurance companies the power of extortion to remain on the Obamacare exchanges. Lies about pharmaceutical companies reinvesting in research & development fools customers into accepting the high priced drugs without revolting. High deductibles make policies unaffordable to many thus making paying the penalty a prudent decision for some. Large quantities of healthy people opting for penalties endangers the viability of insurances as companies are forced to increase their premiums for a sicker insured base. As these prices rise, even fewer people can afford insurance. And the cycle repeats into what is known as the death spiral, the end ofObamacare.
Obamacare was a great start if one views it in the proper context. A few years ago I wrote an article titled “Obamacare: First Step To Eliminating Immorality That Is Health Insurance” that rings true more than ever. I wrote the following.
Obamacare gets rid of the immoral parts of health insurance. The practices of recessions, denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, and caps will be gone. Many new preventative screenings had to be part of every plan without copays. 80% or more of premiums must go towards actual healthcare.
There are several health insurance companies. Each one must have its own CEO, CFO, Board, advertising, shareholders, buildings, and staff. The cost of duplicating all these expenses is the reason why up to 33% of every insurance premium goes into someone’s pocket instead of into healthcare. We are asked to unlearn basic arithmetic in order to accept that the above system could somehow be less expensive or more efficient than a system where we all pay a premium to a single entity and that one entity pays the medical bill for those who get sick (no advertising, multiple CEO, CFO, Board, shareholder expenses, etc.).
During the Affordable Care Act debate there was a public option that would have simulated the latter. Lobbying summarily got it removed because had it made it into the Act, over a short period of time, arithmetics would prevail as the public option would be less expensive for any given plan. It would then turn Obamacare into a single payer system by attrition.
There are several different pathways to reach the same goal. It is however important that the paths are built. Obamacare is the path built with pebbles and stones. It is better than the mud path of years past. As riders demand a smoother path they won’t yearn for the mud path again but for a paved road. Americans will not go back after tasting healthcare/health insurance as a right with all the benefits mentioned above. Exchanges will become single payer entities as health insurance companies are unable to demand the profits they want. Eventually exchanges will morph into Medicare for all.
The pebbles and stones that are the current instantiation of the Affordable Care Act are wearing thin with Americans. They are justified. In the aggregate, Americans spend more per capita on health care than any country in the world. The fact that their outcomes are no better and in many instances less favorable that other nations that spend substantially less mean that American health care is extractive. In other words, the health industries are pilfering the citizenry. The excess dollars go into the pockets of the few.
Those who hate and have always hated the Affordable Care Act will spin its current flaws as a weakness in universal health care proper unless supporters make the case forcefully and aggressively — the for-profit extractive model is the problem. One quickly makes the case with the recent events mentioned earlier.
President Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary Robert Reich in his recent article titled “Why a Single-Payer Healthcare System is Inevitable” points out that private companies realize some kind of single-payer system is a must. And how do they manifest that belief? Reich says the following.
Health insurers spend lots of time, effort, and money trying to attract people who have high odds of staying healthy (the young and the fit) while doing whatever they can to fend off those who have high odds of getting sick (the older, infirm, and the unfit). As a result we end up with the most bizarre health-insurance system imaginable: One ever better designed to avoid sick people. If this weren’t enough to convince rational people to do what most other advanced nations have done – create a single-payer system that insures everyone, funded by taxpayers – consider that America’s giant health insurers are now busily consolidating into ever-larger behemoths.
In other words, the private insurance companies want to be the single payer for a profit. The question is, why would we pay a for-profit company to pay a bill when a government agency could do it at a much lesser cost?
Insurance companies by definition manage risk to maximize profit for their shareholders. They do it by denying service and attempting to insure healthy people, an immoral act. If everyone has to be insured, there is no risk to manage. It becomes a corporate giveaway just like the federal student loan program. Remember, the government guaranteed every single student loan in the past. As such, banks took on zero risks, yet charged interest that they kept as profit. If the student defaulted, the government made them whole. President Obama abolished that corporate giveaway.
Robert Reich says it best.
The real choice in the future is either a hugely expensive for-profit oligopoly with the market power to charge high prices even to healthy people and stop insuring sick people. Or else a government-run single payer system – such as is in place in almost every other advanced economy – dedicated to lower premiums and better care for everyone. We’re going to have to choose eventually.
Health care, health insurance should not be left to the market. When one needs health care, they are not in the position to shop around or abide by normal competitive or supply and demand rules. A patient is always at a disadvantage since the product that they seek they must have to live. As such the delivery of health care by definition is extortive.
The time to choose is upon us. Those who want to make the right choice must join the fight now. They must enlighten their friends, families, acquaintances, and coworkers now. Why? Those who want to continue the profitable extortion are relentless and will misinform, lie, and confuse to have Americans make the wrong choice.