The core difference? Profit. A private system is based on a business model, and the final answer is the bottom line: how to increase profits. Now today, I'm not talking about the obscene profits and CEO salaries but what the profit-motive leads them to do to their customers.
So here's just one more example of what that leads to:
Having been a victim of domestic violence is a pre-existing condition that would lead some insurance companies to deny coverage.In 1994, an informal survey by the House Judiciay Committee found that half of the 16 largest insurers in the country considered domestic violence in deciding whether to approve health coverage. The Pennsylvania insurance Department reported a year or so later that nearly one out of four insurance companies factored in domestic violence when deciding whether to issue or renew policies.
Those are old statistics, and its hard to update because insurance companies are reluctant to reveal their underwriting standards. But, shocking as that seems to us, it is perfectly consistent with bottom-line thinking. The same thinking that leads them to employ people whose sole job is to comb through claimants' early records to find some overlooked "pre-existing" diagnosis or some undisclosed trivial doctor visit 20 years ago -- so they can deny the claim.
So what is so egregious about the domestic violence thing? It means that a woman may choose to stay in an abusive marriage because she would lose her coverage under her husband's health insurance and be unable to get her own because of a history of being the victim -- not the perpetrator -- of domestic violence.
You see, it's not the wife-beater who is penalized; it is the beaten wife. Because, if he beats her again, she may need medical care; but he probably won't. Get it? It's totally an a-moral thing; just business.
Long live America !!!
Long live our God, Big Business !!!!
Long live our Heavenly Paradise, Billionaire's Island. !!!!!
Ralph
Of course, from the standpoint of the ethics of health insurance, is there any difference in a woman being penalized for having been beaten by her husband and having genes that predispose her to diabetes or certain types of cancer? Or what about the preventable illnesses related to smoking, substance abuse, and obesity?
ReplyDeleteWhere do you draw the line in making people pay extra -- or not get benefits at all -- because of what they have done or has been done to them, or just bad luck?
It's all so much simpler if you consider insurance to be what it was originally designed for: spreading the risk and everyone shares in the cost and the benefits. That's what can happen when you have a single payer, government regulated system.
Put profit into it, and people naturally start slicing and dicing to make a bigger profit.
That's why basic health care should not be a for-profit business, IMHO.