|  Candace Talmadge Read Candace's bio and previous columns
August 7, 2009
It’s Not ‘Reform’ If It
Merely Locks In Health Insurance Industry Profits
Candidate Barack Obama
opposed mandating health insurance purchases. President Obama now says he
favors an individual mandate in health care reform legislation. It’s all
part of something he called “shared responsibility.”
“A mandate is a potential
nightmare,” says Wendell Potter, a senior fellow on health at the Center for
Media and Democracy. Potter should know. He spent 20 years as a high-level
executive for major health insurance companies and recently testified before
the U.S. Senate about the industry.
But he had a crisis of
conscience after witnessing firsthand the consequences of a system dominated
by for-profit health insurers. He quit his most recent job as a
communications vice president for Cigna Corp., and began speaking out about
the pernicious role that for-profit insurers play in making U.S. health care
the world’s most expensive while trailing many other nations in quality.
Potter minces no words.
Since the last battle over health care reform in the early 1990s, the
industry has consolidated into what he calls “a cartel” of seven major
players: WellPoint, United Healthcare, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Health Net and
Coventry Health Care. One out of every three Americans who have health
insurance has a policy with one of these seven companies, according to
Potter.
These businesses’
responsibility is not shared by any means. It is exclusively to Wall Street
investors, whose pressure for greater returns is relentless. Thus health
insurers’ sole focus is profits, not paying for health care for those who
buy their coverage. The industry has deep pockets, no scruples and
tremendous influence in Washington.
According to the Public
Action Campaign Fund, members of congressional committees who voted against
health care reform received 65 percent more in campaign donations over their
political careers from insurance and other health care related interests
than those who voted for it.
“It’s evil, the tricks the
health care insurance industry plays,” Potter says. “There has never been
any reason to think the industry has been an honest, honorable participant
in health care reform.”
Potter regards the Obama
Administration as naïve to think it could negotiate in good faith with
health insurers. “The Democrats are so eager to pass reform, they will enact
something that will lock in the industry’s long-term profitability” instead
of truly reforming health care funding, he says.
Here’s how that might play
out. Even without a law requiring that everyone buy coverage, health
insurance premiums are expected to grow 71 percent over the next decade,
according to the Center for American Progress. From an annual average of
$13,100 today for a family of four, health insurance premiums will soar
beyond $22,000 a year by 2019.
A purchase requirement
certainly won’t make health insurance any cheaper. As the federal government
has to subsidize more and more individuals because they cannot afford the
premiums, a greater and greater proportion of federal health care dollars
will be gobbled up by private businesses that have absolutely zero incentive
to rein in overhead and other non-health care related costs.
In the end, the entire
premise of basing “reform” on employer-provided health insurance makes no
sense while U.S. businesses are busy sending millions of jobs overseas,
never to return.
“People don’t realize they
are one layoff away from being uninsured,” Potter emphasizes. “They don’t
realize how serious it is and how vulnerable they are to becoming
uninsured.”
Reform based on a health
insurance purchase mandate won’t help any of them in the slightest, while
forcing Americans to fork over hard-earned dollars to yet another cartel.
© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission. Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum. To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.
This is Column #CT171. Request permission to publish here. | 
