I read a few years ago that health insurer Kaiser-Permanante’s CEO got a $20 million dollar bonus that year in addition to his exorbitant salary. TWENTY. MILLION. DOLLARS. In healthcare, bonus’ like that come when the company has been extremely profitable and the way they do that is to raise premiums, deny care and lowball doctors on their negotiated fees. It’s a nasty, nasty business.
Okay, so imagine if a company covered it’s overhead but never overcharged, denied or lowballed. Imagine if that $20 million dollars had stayed in the pockets of their insured. Imagine that people actually had good health insurance that they could actually afford.
I don’t understand why such a thing can only be imaginary. I don’t understand why there cannot be non-profit health insurance agencies, kind of like credit unions, where profit is not a motivating factor and savings are passed on to their customers. Where the agency and the insured work as partners in care instead of having an adversarial relationship, as is the norm with profit-driven companies.
People would pay their “premium” out of their paychecks like most already do for Medicare and and their health insurance except 1) they wouldn’t have to pay that Medicare tax because Medicare would be dismantled and 2) They would pay on a sliding scale based on their paycheck, just like the Medicare tax. 3) Exorbitant premiums would be a thing of the past. No more $800-1000 a month for a family of three, no more outrageous deductibles that you’ll never meet unless you’re stricken with a horrible, catastrophic illness.
This system would be far more efficient than Medicare because it would still be run as a business by non-profit contractors who would bid on the contract and whose contracts would be renewed contingent on their service and efficiency levels, pretty much like any other contractor in the private sector. The government would effectively be out of the healthcare business and healthcare would be run like a non-profit by people who are actually experienced in running businesses.
There is NO reason this couldn’t work and there is no reason it wouldn’t be totally superior to our currently broken systems of Medicare and private healthcare. When you remove the profit factor, which totally degrades healthcare, and focus on serving customers and fairly compensating doctors, people will finally get the care they need.
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