Since the 1980s, Americans have been told that inserting private health insurers as intermediaries between patients and doctors would save money and improve care. After 40 years, this theory has failed on both counts.
Our six largest health insurers have been consolidating for many years, buying out smaller competitors and merging with large pharmacy benefit management companies (e.g. CVS merging with
Insurers also buy medical practices and clinics. UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest employer of physicians. This results in the company directing us to vendors it owns and/or operates.
With their outsized profits, insurance companies are spending more to influence public opinion, sometimes using misinformation to influence public policy as well as elections.
These companies are also making us pay more and more out of our own pockets through cost-sharing deductibles, co-pays, and coinsurance before we pay a penny in actual health care. They are no longer paying the same percentage of claims or claim amounts that they used to pay due to their ability to pass on more and more costs to us.
Most Americans don’t even have
Currently, our overall health care financing system is largely funded by the taxpayer in
Last year, the supersized revenues of the big six health insurers totaled
Americans are also deprived of pharmaceutical prices these days. More than 45 million Americans forgo drugs because of the cost. Historically, Pharma cites the cost of research and development to explain why these prices are so high. The truth is that drug prices are not set based on research and development costs, but on what the market will bear. The biggest pharmaceutical companies sometimes spend twice as much on marketing as on research and development.
Pharmaceutical companies spend millions of dollars buying off competitors to stay away from their most profitable drugs, keep them off the market and delay generic production. Insurance and drug inflation is due to unregulated monopoly power.
So what do we do with this grim picture in health care? Pay attention to the candidates running for office in each party. Attend town halls and Zoom forums and ask tough questions. Ask them if they receive money from special interest groups and healthcare PACs. Ask our current legislators if they do too.
Health care isn’t about political parties, it’s legislators who write our laws in favor of corporations and don’t enforce antitrust laws. Indifference is how they maintain the status quo, which can currently cost us our lives and our savings. Voting is our power.
Health care and public education should be seen as infrastructure. Health care and education are things that everyone needs in their lives and strengthen both our country and our economy. Our voice is our vote.
