Issues Under Fire: Why Do We Need Health Insurance Companies?

Issues Under Fire: Why Do We Need Health Insurance Companies?

It's been said many times, if you can keep people asking all the wrong questions, you'll never have to worry about your answers. And after observing U.S. politicians scheme for decades to scam their constituents into believing government has no place in healthcare, we think the time has come to ask, why should insurance companies have a place in healthcare? Insurance companies are nothing but middlemen. Since middlemen generally drive up costs, the obvious question to ask is, why do we need them? And if we don't, why not try another way?

When the healthcare insurance companies conclude an area they service cannot return a satisfactory profit to their shareholders, they'll pack up and leave without the least concern for people left behind without access to medical care. And one wouldn't expect a middleman to do anything else. A middleman is in business to make money. The services they represent are merely an afterthought. Take Iowa for example: Tens of thousands of individual health policy consumers could be left with no insurance option if the last carrier decides to pull out of the state. And Iowa is not alone. Other states have similar concerns. 

Health insurance giant Aetna announced they've decided to exit the Virginia market, citing expected losses in 2018. In 2016, Aetna sold individual healthcare plans in 16 states. Today, they're leaving the door open to not selling individual healthcare plans in any states due to profitability issues. And even though Aetna maintains plans sold to consumers through their employers won't be impacted, those without jobs will be S.O.L.

Still, to be fair, health insurance companies have heavy expenses. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Their costs for marketing are huge. And executive salaries are staggering. Unfortunately, few of these expenses does anything for healthcare.

So, by now you should be asking yourselves, if health insurance companies are just heartless profiteers raising rates on consumers, simply because the free market system allows them to charge whatever they can manipulate the market to bear, why are U.S. politicians steering people into the clutches of these corporate insurance products? And while we're asking, why have U.S. politicians failed to provide a Public Option as a fail-safe against companies deciding to move on? Well, that last why is rhetorical.

Many Americans have come to realize the health insurance lobbyist's greatest fear is a government funded Public Option. The trillion dollar healthcare industry spends millions on U.S. politicians to keep them conning the American people into believing the federal government's involvement in healthcare will only raise the cost and lower the quality of their care. That message is as simple as it is consistent. When it comes to healthcare, the government can do no good and corporate insurance can do no wrong. And to even bring the single-payer healthcare concept into the conversation is considered Un-American. 

Bottom line: Access to a government funded Public Option would've cured most of what ails Obama-Care, aka The Affordable Care Act. However, the simple fact of the matter is, U.S. politicians have intentionally misled and misinformed Americans over the healthcare issue for as along as healthcare has been an issue. And they've been able to get away with it for one reason and only one reason. They've been keeping Americans asking all the wrong questions about healthcare. Podcast below.