End the Big Insurance protection racket
CAGLE
The health insurance companies have taken to the airwaves to blame the hospital systems for out-of-control health care costs.
Their argument has some merit, because hospital costs have skyrocketed in recent years. But the insurance companies have been the chief culprits in the cartelization of health care, and it was the Obamacare law they helped shape that was the proximate cause of industrywide consolidation, with a loss of choice and competition and sharply rising prices.
This consolidation was intentional. Obamacare architect Zeke Emanuel famously declared it would “unleash forces that favor integration across the continuum of care,” and he was right with a vengeance.
Regulatory mandates like standardized benefit packages were inherently protective of incumbent insurance companies. But less well understood was how the Medical Loss Ratio regulation would function. This rule limits the percentage of revenue insurers can retain after paying claims, so they buy providers, including home care companies, so they can pay claims to themselves. They buy Pharmaceutical Benefit Managers (PBMs) so their drug claims go to themselves. They exploit transfer pricing between these subsidiaries.
Obamacare subsidies cap the portion of premiums paid by subsidized enrollees as a percentage of their income. The rest – and every increase – becomes an unlimited burden on taxpayers.
The Medicaid expansion to non-disabled working-age adults enriched the same insurance companies because they dominate the managed care business. That is 100% taxpayer-funded and with fraud rates that enrage the public.
The Democrats who sold Obamacare to the American people have reaped massive campaign contributions from these companies as their stocks zoomed.
Polling conducted by McLaughlin Associates for Unleash Prosperity Now confirms what every family sitting around a kitchen table already knows: rising insurance costs are the number one health care concern in the country. Two-thirds of voters are pointing the finger at the insurers and demanding action.
The public’s priorities are crystal clear: to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, lower premiums, reverse the consolidation trend to bring back competition and choice, and empower the patient to control health care dollars from their employers and government programs – not send them directly to insurance companies.
Premiums, deductibles, and copays have moved in only one direction: up. We have reached a point of absurdity where paying cash for an MRI or a prescription drug is often cheaper than using the “benefit” you pay thousands for every month. When insurance coverage becomes meaningless against the tide of out-of-pocket costs, what’s the point?
The public is overwhelmingly aligned with a free-market Accountability, Competition, and Transparency solution: 92% want full price transparency, 92% want PBM middleman reforms to ensure drug discounts actually reach the patient, and 85% want aggressive penalties for the waste and fraud that define the current system. Americans want HSAs, old-fashioned major medical plans, and direct-pay subscription models to all be on a level playing field. They want options that empower patients rather than bureaucrats in the government or at insurance companies.
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to worship at the altar of Obamacare, desperate to keep the gravy train moving for their corporate allies. At a recent hearing, Ranking Member Frank Pallone actually told insurance CEOs, “It’s not your fault.”
Yes, it is. And it is the fault of their allies in Congress who built this protection racket, where we continuously pay more to these companies to get less actual health care.
Congress cannot go another year without major health care reform. Members of Congress face a simple choice: stand with families and win, or bow down to Big Insurance and face the wrath of an electorate that has finally had enough.
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