Health Insurance Exec Admits Her Industry Rations Care: "We Believe In Controlling Utilization"

Below quote taken from this excellent site: www.huffingtonpost.com...

In a New York Times story today about health insurance executives and their employees complaining about criticism of the health insurance industry, one executive acknowledges that the industry is all about rationing care:

"I believe we're getting the pushback because we are standing up for what we believe in," said Cheryl Tidwell, 45, Humana's director of commercial sales training. "We believe there's a better way to control costs by controlling utilization and getting people involved in their health care."

Now, I know we're supposed to think that private for-profit health care companies don't ration care, while government-run programs like Medicare do - but as the insurance industry admits right here for all to see, that's just not the case. The obvious truth is that the health insurance industry works hard to "control utilization" - that is, it works hard to make sure that when you need a costly medical service, you are "controlled" (read: prevented) from getting it.

Sure, we're all against excessive testing - and there are good ways to deal with those inefficiencies. But that's not what the insurance industry is talking about. It is talking about its practice of rationing care - and now that reality is right there in black and white for all to see.

Health Care

Barack Obama

In a New York Times story today about health insurance executives and their employees complaining about criticism of the health insurance industry, one executive acknowledges that the industry is all ...
In a New York Times story today about health insurance executives and their employees complaining about criticism of the health insurance industry, one executive acknowledges that the industry is all ...

Written by David Sirota autor of Hostile Takeover and Uprising.

www.americanprogress.org...

The fear of losing your job is a familiar feeling to many Americans today. And for the nearly six-in-ten Americans—59.3 percent—receiving health care through their employer, that fear is often exacerbated by the anxiety that losing a job also means loss of health care coverage—not just for the worker, but often for their family as well.

While the share of workers relying on employment-based health care coverage has declined from its peak of 64.2 percent in 2000, access to adequate affordable health care for a majority of Americans is still contingent on their employment status.

Employers are shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month—just last month employment declined by 663,000—and the number of uninsured Americans continues to rise.

Sixty-two percent of the American public believes that the current economic turmoil makes it more important than ever to take on health care reform, and the need for comprehensive reform becomes all the more evident as conditions in the economy continue to deteriorate and more Americans become uninsured.

Estimating the rise in the number of uninsured - Forty-six million Americans lacked health care coverage in 2007, when the national employment level peaked and before the current economic recession officially began. Today, that number is markedly higher as many workers who have lost their jobs have also lost their employer-provided health insurance.

Employers have shed 5.1 million jobs in the last 15 months. Three industries alone—manufacturing, construction, and professional and business services—account for nearly three-quarters of total jobs lost. Manufacturing has shed 1.5 million jobs—1.1 million in durable goods, 367,000 in nondurable goods manufacturing—construction has eliminated 1.1 million jobs; and professional and business services have cut 1.2 million positions.

Insurers and Politicians Create Health Care Tyranny
By David Sirota

For those still clinging to quaint notions of the American ideal, these have been a faith-shaking 10 years. Just as evolutionary science once got in the way of creationists' catechism, so has politics now undermined patriots' naive belief that the United States is a functioning democracy.

The 21st century opened with a handful of Supreme Court puppets appointing George W. Bush president after he lost the popular vote -- and we all know the costs in blood and treasure that insult wrought. Now, the decade closes with another cabal of stooges assaulting the "one person, one vote" principle -- and potentially bringing about another disaster.

Here we have a major congressional push to fix a healthcare system that leaves one-sixth of the country without coverage. Here we have 535 House and Senate delegates elected to give all 300 million of us a voice in the solution. And here we have just 13 of those delegates holding the initiative hostage.

In the Senate, both parties have outsourced healthcare legislation to six Finance Committee lawmakers: Max Baucus, D-Mont.; Kent Conrad, D-N.D.; Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. The group recently announced it is rejecting essential provisions like a public insurance option that surveys show the public supports. Meanwhile, seven mostly Southern House Democrats have been threatening to use their Commerce Committee votes to gut any healthcare bill, regardless of what the American majority wants.

This, however, isn't about the majority. These lawmakers, hailing mostly from small states and rural areas, together represent only 13 million people, meaning that those speaking for just 4 percent of America are maneuvering to impose their healthcare will on the other 96 percent of us.

Census figures show that the poverty rates are far higher and per-capita incomes far lower in the 13 legislators' specific districts than in the nation as a whole. Put another way, these politicians represent exactly the kinds of districts whose constituents would most benefit from universal healthcare. So why are they leading the fight to stop -- rather than pass -- reform?

Because when tyranny mixes with legalized bribery, constituents' economic concerns stop mattering.

Thanks to our undemocratic system and our corrupt campaign finance laws, the healthcare industry doesn't have to fight a 50-state battle. It can simply buy a tiny group of congresspeople, which is what it's done. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, health interests have given these 13 members of Congress $12 million in campaign contributions -- a massive sum further enhanced by geography.

Remember, politicians trade favors for reelection support -- and the best way to ensure reelection is to raise money for TV airtime (read: commercials). In rural America, that airtime is comparatively cheap because the audience is relatively small. Thus, campaign contributions to rural politicians like these 13 buy more commercials -- and, consequently, more political loyalty.

The end result is an amplifier of tyranny: precisely because the undemocratic system unduly empowers legislators from sparsely populated (and hence cheap) media markets, industry cash can more easily purchase tyrannical obstruction from those same legislators. In this case, that means congresspeople blocking healthcare reform that would most help their own voters.

Of course, there is talk of circumventing the 13 obstructionists and forcing an un-filibuster-able vote of the full Congress. Inside the Washington palace, the media court jesters and political aides-de-camp have reacted to such plans by raising predictable charges of improper procedure, poor manners, bad etiquette and other Versailles transgressions.

But the real crime would be letting the tyrants block that vote, trample democracy and kill healthcare reform in the process.