Moving to a universal healthcare system with everything run by the Federal government might not solve all the problems in our healthcare system, and it might not really reduce all of our healthcare costs, but at least it would give us someone to hold accountable for rising costs, challenges with accessing care, and questionable quality of care. People across the United States are frustrated by healthcare providers and systems that seem to always be raising their costs and charging outrageous fees for basic medical care. Younger people today seem to find the idea of profiting on medical care to be slightly unethical, and health insurance company practices do a lot to increase people’s discontent with the current system and actors. In short, a lot of people probably just want to move to universal coverage provided by the government just to simplify the process and cut out insurance companies, especially when the average consumer can’t understand what benefit the insurance company provides.
These thoughts about our discontent with our current system came to mind this morning after reading the following passage that I highlighted in Dave Chase’s book The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call. Chase writes, “If you’re a fully insured employer and have higher-than-expected claims in one year, your insurance carrier will work to get as much back as possible in subsequent years through larger premium increases.”
What Chase describes is something that not everyone is directly aware of or able to explain, but it is something many of us have a vague feeling of or intuitive expectation of. Rather than existing as organizations to help us be healthy, rather than trying to solve a problem, rather than caring about our health needs, many people simply see health insurance as stealing a few bucks from them, their employers, their providers, and from people who really need medical care. Insurance companies are seen as morally unethical, powerful government lobbiers, and as bureaucratic machines that treat everyone like numbers.
If you are not in favor of a public health insurance program, and if you think that private insurance is the way to go, ask yourself what the industry could do better to actually provide value to patients. If you are in a health insurance company and think you do provide value to your patients, ask yourself, why don’t people see it? Perhaps we only see the games that insurance plays to limit access to care, to increase premiums every year, and to squeeze hospitals and providers, causing us to misunderstand the benefits that insurance provides. If private health insurance really wants to survive in the future, the industry needs to do better at showing its value, and minimizing its greedy tricks, otherwise, you can’t blame the public for wanting to eliminate insurance companies and have an accountable government take on universal coverage.