Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Insurance Questions

This rabidly intense and exclusive demonization of the insurance industry is getting kind of old. Why is it perfectly okay for a hospital to charge $80 for two Aspirin, but evil for insurance companies to base their premiums on having to pay the hospital that charges that kind of money?

Why is it perfectly okay for Hospital Corporation of America to maintain a 17% profit margin while paying multimillion-dollar fines for Medicare fraud, and it is perfectly delightful for Pfizer to maintain a 30% profit margin while paying more than $2 billion in fines for marketing fraud, but it is evil for United Health Care to maintain a 5% profit margin while, admittedly, committing significant abuses?

Why is it okay to mandate with state laws that insurance companies provide coverage for additional benefits, but evil for insurance companies to raise premiums to pay for those additional benefits?

If insurance companies are going to be required to provide insurance to people with existing conditions, is that coverage going to have to include the condition itself? So if I go to an insurance company and tell them I have a condition that costs $1000/month to treat, are they going to have to cover that treatment? What monthly premium will they be allowed to charge me?

Demonizing insurance companies is a lot of fun and makes us feel good, but what are we actually accomplishing when hospitals and drug companies are left out of the equation? What are we really gaining toward lowering costs, when the industries that are generating the costs are left completely unregulated, and only the industry that is paying those costs is painted as evil incarnate and is regulated into oblivion?

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