Health insurance companies masters of risk avoidance

Letter to the Editor
Gazette Times (Corvallis, Ore.)
Thursday, January 21, 2010

Sixty percent of all our health care costs are directly or indirectly taxpayer money. Because premiums paid by employers are tax-deductible, insurance companies receive a taxpayer subsidy to cover employees. Actuarially, working people are among our healthiest. Others, who want to purchase health insurance outside the workplace must, first, demonstrate health, then pay exorbitant rates. Seniors, who are at the greatest risk for high health care costs, are covered by the taxpayer through Medicare.

Poor people and those on disability are covered by the taxpayer. Actuarially, poor people are among our sickest. People who don’t have insurance and accrue huge un-payable bills are covered by ALL of us, but only after they declare bankruptcy.

For every dollar insurance companies spend carefully calculating who NOT to cover and canceling policies of those who become unexpectedly ill, they earn five extra dollars in profits. They are the masters of making money off healthy people, with taxpayer subsidies, while the taxpayer cares for those who are ill.

Every other developed country in the world starts the discussion with a basic understanding that health care is a human right and insurance companies should not profit from offering a package of essential health care services. Ironically, they cover everybody, at less cost, with better results.

On our current path, the financial barrier to accessing care causes 45,000 excess deaths every year, bankrupts individuals, and threatens the solvency of our government.

As proposed, the “individual mandate” with more taxpayer subsidies to for-profit insurance companies is NOT going to solve the problem and costs will continue to sky rocket because we don’t have a system. Publicly financed, single payer health care is the only fiscally conservative solution to our health care crisis.

Paul Hochfeld, M.D.
Corvallis

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