"Health care" Corporations are Evil. Most of the people who work for them are not. Fight back!

Usually, when I write a blog post, I start with something that has happened or is happening, try to develop it and point out the relationships between it and other things that are happening. Toward the end I make an effort to form a conclusion, and, perhaps even make suggestions as to how the problem(s) might be addressed. However, today I think I’ll lead with the conclusion, so folks do not have to read too far:

All of the US healthcare industry (not system) is run by corporations that are effectively evil.* They function for only one purpose: to suck as much money, in the form of profits, stock price, and executive salaries (the executives, who are people, are of course evil) from our economy under the false flag of providing health care. They care not one whit about the health of people, society, or community, nor about decency. They include insurance companies, large hospital systems and provider groups (often owned by insurance companies and -- the exemplar of morality-free rapacious profit -- private equity), pharmaceutical companies and device companies, the large pharmacy chains (e.g., Walgreen’s, CVS) and the PBMs (pharmacy benefits managers) that control drug distribution.

*[I do not believe that corporations are people, despite the scandalous Citizens United decision that decided that they were and that money is speech, so are without human characteristics.]

I could end it there, and say “if you have any questions, read my previous blogs, and the references I cite”, but I will go to talk about a few recent events and actions that bolster this case. First, however, I want to talk about people, the people who work in health care, the people who the other people (called “patients”) seeking health care actually run into. Almost uniformly, they are not the problem. From the higher-paid physicians and other clinicians, including nurses, who provide clinical care, to the pharmacists and pharmacy assistants who dispense medications, to those who answer the phones, schedule appointments, take questions to be transmitted to the clinicians, and even collect money, these are overwhelmingly hard-working people trying to do a good job of serving you. They are almost all employed, however; even about 75% of physicians (and growing) are employed by corporations. If your doctors seem rushed and not to have enough time for you, if they are focused on computer screens, if they don’t quickly call you back, this is not their choice, it is the mandate of the corporation that employs them. It is essentially the same as the traditional “speed up” for assembly line workers: to be “more efficient”, a euphemism for “making more money for the corporation”. The same is true for the clerks who may take a lot of time to answer the phone, or who are “unwilling” to cut you some slack on your bill (when really they do not have the power to), or the pharmacist who takes “too long” to fill a prescription or provide you with the information that you need. These are, by and large, good people trapped in a heartless system.

And, yet, because these are the people –physicians, nurses, pharmacists, clerks – whom we, as patients, see and interact with, they are the ones on whom we take out our frustrations when we feel we are not being treated as we should be. When we are denied care when we are late because the bus was delayed, or because we had to get our children off to school but the early appointment was the only one available, or because we don’t get off work until 4:15 but the 3:30 appointment was the last available. Yes, like the rest of us, all these people in healthcare want to work reasonable hours and get home on time, but the rules that they are required to enforce are not made by them. They are made by the corporate executives, those who have sold their souls, the CPAs and MBAs (and occasionally MDs and RNs, but usually those also have MBAs) whose expertise is in making money for the corporation, not in serving you, and who are handsomely rewarded for it. They are the people who are responsible and to whom your anger should be directed, but good luck getting to them. Maybe you can reach the CEO of a small rural hospital (who will almost never be the real CEO, since it is probably owned by a large hospital corporation) but not the heads of the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and massive health systems and private equity owners of all of these. More than the highest Mafia dons, they are protected by layers and layers of others who keep them from having to interact with you. But they ARE the evil people (even if, like those Mafia dons, they are nice to their children), creating, maintaining, and expanding an industry designed to extract as much money as possible from the economy and mis-label it “health care”.

The idea that this skates close to the edge of what is legal is disingenuous. It is often illegal; a huge part of the industry regularly acts illegally. We want there to be laws against such abuse, but even when there are they are irregularly, even rarely, enforced largely due to inadequate funding for the regulators. This is on purpose; those huge corporations have the money to buy – I mean donate to – congresspeople and also offer high-paid jobs to former regulators who “behaved” in the revolving door system. And when the rules are enforced, the fines are relatively low, and are just written off as a “cost of doing business”

Examples?

How about “Whistleblower Accuses Aledade, Largest US Independent Primary Care Network, of Medicare Fraud”, KFF Health News (March 5, 2024)? Using a practice known as “upcoding”, the company employs large numbers of people to add additional diagnoses to the one for which the person is being treated, increasing the reimbursement. This practice results in greater fee-for-service payment, but is even better (for the company) in increasing the “capitated payment” that they get for a particular “covered life”, both in general managed care and in Medicare Advantage programs. In this case, and in many hospitals, it is the provider who is fiddling the data to get more money from the insurer (which, in the case of Medicare Advantage, as well as Medicaid and some other programs, is the government – that is, you, the taxpayer).

But let’s not cry for the poor insurance companies, although they would like you to think it is the doctors and hospitals who are at fault for milking them. Even when something very bad happens, like the recent cyberattack at the largest health insurer, UnitedHealth, in which they may have paid a $22M ransom, it is the providers who are not getting paid. UnitedHealth is doing just fine, thank you. Not only is $22M not that much for them, but as pointed out by former insurance executive and current whistleblower Wendell Potter in his substack

Keep in mind that while the company is unable to pay thousands of the country’s doctors and hospitals for who knows how long because of the hack, UnitedHealth will be able to hold on to billions of dollars in premium income longer, and that will boost its investment income, which is considerable on any day of the week.

They have the system covered from all angles. UnitedHealth has moved into owning practices directly, through Optum, a very large provider and the source of a big percent of their profit. Along with their Medicare Advantage products.

Indeed, as providers and insurers point the finger at each other, and as pharmacies buy up the PBMs that control utilization, increasing vertical integration, and as private equity companies buy up all of these, there is one thing that you can be sure of: the benefit to the customer, consumer, patient, person, society is the one thing not being considered. We are the collateral damage in the fights among these amoral (at least, really immoral) behemoths.

What can we do? It often seems like there is not much. Our feeble cries are drowned out by the corporate contributions to our congresspeople. But we can let our elected representatives know that we are on to the abuses by those companies, and that we hold them responsible for holding (or not holding) the corporations responsible. We can, for example, demand something specific, that they sign on to the Patients over Profits pledge (initiated by National Nurses United, NNU, and now sponsored by many patient and community groups):

I pledge to put patients over profits and not take contributions over $200 from the executives, lobbyists, and PACs affiliated with the corporate health care industry, including private insurers, pharma corporations, and private hospitals who are organizing to take over our health care system.

They won’t if just a few of us ask. But if LOTS of us do, they just might.

And that’s a start.

Medicare and Medicaid at 50: Time to include “US” all

On Thursday, July 30, Medicare and Medicaid turned 50 years old. The anniversary was marked by an event held at the Truman Library in Independence, MO, which I attended. Why there? In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed those bills (officially Titles XVIII and XIX of the Social Security Act) there, in the presence of former President Truman and his wife Bess, who received cards #1 and #2. The location was chosen for its symbolism even in 1965, because Truman had fought for a national health insurance system and lost. Nearly 20 years later, Johnson honored his legacy by signing these two major bills (also opposed by the AMA) in his library. Both presidents thought that this was a down-payment on the national health insurance system that was sure to come soon. But it took another 45 years to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and we still don’t have universal health insurance, and ACA and even Medicare are under constant attack. At least now it is not the AMA that is the active opposition.

This event was not the first held at the Truman Library to remember that day. Seven years ago, a group of single-payer activists organized a 43^rd anniversary celebration there, both to commemorate the signing and to call for a universal health insurance system. That event was less “official” but more passionate, with talks by both local KC Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan. Rep. Conyers’ first year in Congress was 1965, the year Medicare and Medicaid passed, and all those years later he was still vital and still in Congress and was the sponsor of HR 676, the national single payer bill. This year’s event had more of the feel of an administration press conference with several federal and Missouri bureaucrats speaking. Some of talks, including those by Truman’s grandson Clifton Truman Daniel and former Missouri state rep and insurance commissioner Scott Lakin, were good, but only one had any real passion. That was given by Bridget McCandless, MD, the CEO of the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City (HCFGKC), which sponsored the event.

There is a reason for that. Before taking the reins of HCF, a “conversion” foundation established with the money that came from the sale of a group of not-for-profit hospitals to for-profit HCA, Dr. McCandless, a self-described “Independence girl”, was the medical director of the Jackson County Free Health Clinic in Independence, caring for the many people in that area who could not otherwise access excellent health service. She cared for people who had little, whose lives, in Dr. Camara Jones’ metaphor (most recently discussed in Racism and the Social Determinants of Equity: Camara Jones at Beyond Flexner 2015, April 19, 2015), were lived on the edge of the cliff before they even got sick. Dr. McCandless’ clinic provided a safety net that prevented many people from falling to the ground below. The “lucky” ones were those who were old enough (or disabled enough) to qualify for Medicare, and poor-plus-something enough to qualify for Medicaid. For those people, these federal programs, which now cover about 30% of Americans were indeed life savers.

Dr. McCandless, whose foundation is committed to funding programs that help the underserved and uninsured (the exceptional founding CEO, Steve Roling, was in the audience), talked, as did other speakers, about the difference that Medicare had made in the lives of seniors; before it they (and their families) lived their retirement years in financial fear of sickness. But her passion really showed when talking about Medicaid, originally seen as a means of providing access to health care for the poor. You certainly have to be poor to receive Medicaid, very poor in many states including Missouri, but that is not sufficient. She told us that you have to be “poor and”. Poor and pregnant, poor and the mother of small children, poor and disabled, poor and in a nursing home, poor and – and the tears rolled down her cheeks – a child. ACA was intended to expand this federal-state collaboration to encompass all the “just” poor (with the exception of those who are undocumented), but Missouri, and Kansas, the other state in the Kansas City metropolitan area, are among the states that have not done so.  Dr. McCandless eloquently expressed her hope that our states would rise to the need, that our legislators and leaders would rise to the decency, to remove the “and” by expanding Medicaid.

While it is possible that Missouri, and Kansas, and the other states that have taken advantage of the 2012 Supreme Court decision (National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius), that otherwise upheld the ACA, to not expand Medicaid will still do so, it is unconscionable that they have not yet, that they have left so many people who could now be accessing health care uncovered. It is a land-office business for the safety net clinics in the area, like Dr. McCandless’ former practice, but it is a volume that they can barely care for. When people get very sick, and show up in the Emergency Department and get admitted to the hospital, those hospitals bear the brunt of care without payment, but even their usually powerful lobbies have so far not been successful.

The opposition to this expansion, the opposition to ACA, and even threats to Medicare are often said to be politically driven, but they are ideologically driven. They are driven by the agendas of billionaire elitists, most of whom have never known any hardship. They have been able to further expand their already-considerable influence as a result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and blithely fund the election of their minions to state houses and legislatures.  The New York Times on Aug 2, 2015 documents that fewer than 400 families have contributed the almost half the money in this election cycle. Former Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer once said that many of the privileged were “born on third base and think they’ve hit a triple” (although most of these billionaires were actually born within arm’s length of home plate!). Indeed, they have no empathy; they are selfish and mean. Their minions, who enjoy the power their sponsors’ money provides for them, must be (if they are not truly stupid) also mean, but actually are not fiscally prudent; not funding health care for our people costs us a lot. Medicare already covers our most costly ill (they are old; this is why raising the age for Medicare eligibility to 67 or 68 will save little money). It is way past time for it to cover the rest of us.

Rep Jim McDermott of Washington, a physician and long-time single-payer advocate, has introduced the American Health Security Act of 2015, which will authorize and provide federal funds to support single-payer programs developed by states. It should be passed, but it probably won’t be while we have a Congress bought and paid for by the rich mean selfish people. We have had single-payer bills in Congress before, Rep. Conyers’ and before that Rep. Ron Dellums’. It is time to pass them. We need to go beyond the ACA, we need to make sure states expand Medicaid and take the “and” out of the “poor and” for eligibility. But we need to go farther.

For 50 years Medicare has been literally a life-saver for our seniors. Now we need to expand it to include everyone. Everybody in, nobody out!

ACA: Where are we? And where should we go?

I am finished writing the book, as yet untitled, that I have been working on during my sabbatical, which accounts for the sparse number of blog posts. This is not to say that the book is anywhere near ready to be published; I am sure it will need more revisions.

However, it does mean that I am likely to be posting to the blog more frequently, as I find things that inspire me to write.

Thanks for your patience!
Josh

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been law since 2010, and was supposed to have been fully implemented this year in 2014, although as is clear many of its provisions have not yet been. The most important has been the failure of about half our states to implement the expansion of Medicaid, which was the mechanism through which the law intended to cover all those poor (incomes under 133% of the federal poverty level) who are currently ineligible for Medicaid (most of those now receiving it are poor children and their mothers, although the majority of dollars are spent on nursing home care). This is legal as a result of the Supreme Court decision that was important because it made the rest of the law legal; this is, I think, of faint solace to those poor people who live in my state of Kansas and the others who have failed to expand Medicaid despite the fact that the federal government would have paid 100% of the cost for 4 years, then 90%.

The newest court actions that affect ACA are two Court of Appeals decisions which say, basically, opposite things about the subsidies that support the premiums of people making above 133% of poverty but less than allows them to pay the full amount.[1] One court decided that people living in states that ran their own exchanges were eligible for the subsidies, but that those who were in federally-administered exchanges were not. The other appeals court decided that both were. Of course, those states that have federally-administered exchanges are those with governors and legislatures who oppose ACA completely; they include all those who did not expand Medicaid plus many more (about 36 altogether). This suggests some political agenda; the interpretation of Congressional intent rather than parsing the words, has historically been the basis for such court decisions. It also will mean that the cases will go to the Supreme Court, sometimes known as SCOTUS, but now appropriately called COCUHL (Court of Citizens United and Hobby Lobby), where it will be amazing if a conscious, careful, legal approach supersedes politics. The decision to basically gut the Hobby Lobby decisions one remaining protection only a day after it was announced bodes ill. The Republicans in Congress have decided to sue President Obama for not implementing portions of the ACA, which, as Timothy Egan of the NY Times points out, “…they have tried to repeal more than 50 times.”[2]

What has the Republicans so flustered that they have taken to self-contradictory actions is, in fact, the success of the ACA at achieving many of its goals. These are summarized in another NY Times op-ed, by Paul Krugman, titled “Obamacare fails to fail”.[3] There has been a huge surge in enrollment, and while indeed some people are paying more (largely healthy young people who are low risk for high-cost illness, thus previously had lower premiums), most people (including 74% of Republicans) are happy with their current premiums. In addition to the early wins (preventing insurance companies from not covering those with pre-existing conditions, allowing young people to stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26), we now add over 6 million people who are newly covered, and can access health care. Despite decisions such as Hobby Lobby, most women will now get contraceptive coverage without a copayment. It is a good thing. This is why opponents (mainly ideological) are trying any trick that they can to limit its effectiveness, including the two biggest addressed above—not expanding Medicare and trying to block subsidies for those on the federal exchanges. That is to say, trying to limit health insurance coverage to our less-affluent citizens.

But ACA, even if it came through all the court decisions unscathed, is not a solution. It doesn’t cover those who are not citizens, even though they live here. It is a gift to insurance companies, who still get to charge high rates and make enormous profits, but now have the federal government paying the premiums. Therefore, it will not really save cost. Don’t get me wrong – I am not advocating that we provide less of the health care people need to save money (although I do advocating not providing “health care” that will not help or even harm people just because someone can make money on it). I am saying that the huge profits guaranteed for insurers, and other components of our system who make profit, make it excessively costly. It costs us way more per capita, for poorer health outcomes, than do the healthcare systems of other developed countries. The latest edition of “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”, published in 2014 by the Commonwealth Fund demonstrates this clearly; in comparing 11 wealthy countries the US ranks #11 overall, and #11 in 3 of the 5 areas examined (Efficiency, Equity), and Healthy Lives), #5 in Quality, and #9 in Access. It achieves this less-than-mediocre performance by spending (2011) $8508 per capita, while the other 10 countries spent from $3182 (New Zealand) to $5669 (Norway).[4]

The problem is not that our system is not working, but that it is. Paul Batalden is famous for saying “every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets”, and ours is. The results that we get are relatively poor health outcomes on a population basis, large numbers of people excluded from health care coverage (even after ACA), many people getting unnecessary care because someone can make a profit on it, and the bizarre concept that there are not only people who are preferable to provide care for (because of their wealth or insurance status) but even diseases that it is preferable to provide care for (because the profit margin is better). Our system is not designed for people’s health; it is designed so that some (providers, insurers, drug companies, etc.) can make profit. It gets the results it is designed to get.

But that is unacceptable. We need a health system designed to maximize the health of our people. All our people. And we need it yesterday.

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[1] Goodnough A, Ruling on Health Care Subsidies Puts Coverage at Risk, NY Times 7/23/14, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/us/politics/court-ruling-on-health-care-subsidies-risks-loss-of-coverage.html

[2] Egan, T, “Ambulance Chaser in the House”, NY Times, 7/26/14, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/26/opinion/timothy-egan-Congresss-Next-Big-Idea-Sue-Obama.html

[3][3] Krugman P, “Obamacare fails to fail”, NY Times, 7/13/14. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/opinion/paul-krugman-obamacare-fails-to-fail.html

[4] Karen Davis, Kristof Stremikis, David Squires, and Cathy Schoen, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: How the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally, 2014 Update, The Commonwealth Fund, June 2014. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror