The problem with the US healthcare 'system': THE INSATIABLE PURSUIT OF EVER MORE MONEY BY CORPORATIONS AND WALL ST.

That the US health system is (to quote the opening of an important book*) “broken”, is obvious to almost everyone. It’s a mess. Even calling a “system” is probably incorrect. It costs a tremendous amount of money, generally 2-4x per capita what any other wealthy country spends, and generates far worse public health outcomes (even before the wackadoodle RFKJr became Secretary of HHS) such as longevity, disability-adjusted-life-expectancy (DALE), infant mortality, cancer survival, and almost all other measures. It also is very difficult to access, just getting to see a doctor, as well as financially. This situation has long been true for the poor and much of the working class. It is getting worse as low-income people lose access to Medicaid because of cuts to ACA subsidies or because they live in a state that never expanded Medicaid, and for rural people who are both, on average, older (and thus more likely to have health problems) and poorer. Over time it has increasingly become something that affects working class people, as insurance companies raise their rates, employers become stingier with paying premiums, and, very importantly, as the power of unions has been dramatically eroded by a society concerned only with corporations making the most possible money. It is critical to remember that the health insurance benefits employed workers gained resulted from the struggles of unions, never from the generosity of corporations.

The days of “Cadillac health plans” for unionized workers are long gone, and they are finding themselves in the same pool of too many people seeking too unavailable health care at too unaffordable costs. The new Trump administration plan for the ACA will make things much worse; it may offer lower-cost plans in terms of premiums but with enormous deductibles (‘New A.C.A. Plans Could Increase Family Deductibles to $31,000’, NY Times, Feb 26, 2026). So if you get sick and need care, you’re really screwed, and if you don’t you’re paying insurance premiums for nothing!

And now even those in privileged economic positions, who have money and sometimes even personal access because they are doctors, are finding themselves struggling to access care. People can’t find doctors, especially primary care doctors like family physicians and general internists who can manage their health and the input from various specialists. When they can find them, it is hard to get an appointment. It is very difficult to talk to them, or get a message to them, or speak to anyone who works for them who has any clinical knowledge or understanding. Some people say “I have a good doctor, they respond to my calls, or I can communicate on a health portal,” but these grow fewer. I know physicians who have real difficulties! They need supplies for their insulin pumps, but the insurance companies require notes from their doctors, and it is almost impossible to reach them. I know health care professionals who have heart problems requiring them to wear machines recording their heart rhythm over time, who must wait in lines stretching out the door to see their cardiologists. This is bad, not because they are better educated, wealthier, or health care professionals, but because it is bad for everyone. These people, at least, be able to afford to get a “concierge” doctor who they pay out of pocket, but clearly this is not a solution for most folks. 

We are in the grips of a perfect storm, with insurance companies raising their rates and finding reasons to deny care, a shortage of doctors in many areas, both geographic and by specialty, especially including primary care, with doctors having such speed-up of their work that they scarcely have time to see their patients not to mention respond to calls or notes. We have federal and state governments cutting back public benefits, including not only Medicaid but also Medicare and the VA. Doctors no longer work for themselves where they can make decisions about how to run their practice, and balance work and income, but for giant hospital “healthcare” systems and private equity investors interested only in profit.

Well, you know, maybe “perfect storm” is the wrong analogy. That phrase implies that the bad situation you find yourself in is the result of several unrelated events that come together coincidentally at the same time. This is not the case in the health care crisis. While a lot of things seem to be happening together, they are all manifestations of one single thing:

THE INSATIABLE PURSUIT OF EVER MORE MONEY BY CORPORATIONS AND WALL ST.

That's it. That is 100% of the problem. A lot of effort is spent trying to transfer blame between blameworthy players, with insurance companies saying providers are too greedy, providers saying insurers don’t pay enough. And everyone blames the pharmaceutical industry and even components of that industry – drug manufacturers, giant retail pharmacies, and “PBMs”, the middlemen between drug companies and insurers – blaming each other. But this “it’s not me, it’s them” is all a load of crap. Yes, sometimes one part of the “healthcare” industry is doing better financially than another, sometimes one corporate behemoth puts another out of business, but what is never a major consideration – and I put forward it should be the only consideration – is what improves the health of the American people, as individuals and as a whole. You, the “patient”, the sick person who needs care, is the one player in this whole thing whose interests are not getting the consideration they deserve – which should be ALL of it.

The growing trend, which is the proof of all of this, is the “vertical integration” of the components of the system. This means that the same company is the insurance company, the provider, the drug supplier. It feeds itself sucking out your money at every turn while denying you the care that you need. Several recent posts on the “Health Care Un-covered” substack detail aspects of this, including ‘The Economic Exploitation of Independent Physicians by Insurers’, and recently ‘2025: Big Insurance’s $1.7 Trillion Year’ which shows that while they ARE making these outrageous amounts (from YOUR pocket, whether directly in premiums, co-pays, and deductibles or premiums paid by your employer in lieu of higher wages) the bosses THEY answer to, the sharks on Wall St., are harassing them to do more, charge more, deny more care, because it isn’t enough; they aren’t making enough  profit! They need more!

I said at the beginning of this piece that “almost everyone” realizes that our healthcare system is a mess, and I think this is true. Certainly, those profiting from it, all those insurance companies and health systems and private equity companies and drug companies, know it. They love it. They’re making out like bandits, one might be tempted to say, if only bandits could begin to compete with them in cupidity, heartlessness, and immorality.

The truly infuriating thing is that our governments are in the practice of enabling them, of enhancing their power, of increasing their profits (see, for example, the gargantuan efforts to move US seniors out of traditional Medicare, an efficient and cost-effective single-payer plan to Medicare Advantage, which puts them back at the mercy of insurance companies; see for example Medicare re-enrollment: Time to consider being dissatisfied with a new plan!, Oct 25, 2025). Most legislators and their health pundits who are not the out-and-out-on-the-take corporate enablers that characterize the Republican party are the somewhat-less-but-really-still-on-the-take corporate enablers of the Democratic party!

We regularly hear from even somewhat progressive (not to mention the right-wing) think tanks and academics and legislators that it would be impossible to change the system to truly benefit the health of the American people, and not the pockets of big corporations, even though it has been done in every other wealthy (and many less wealthy) countries in the world. The key change here is to take the profit (or most of the profit, or the possibility of generating ever more profit) out of the health system. The problem is simply NOT that people use “too much” health care and cost too much money; the problem IS simply that insurers and big health systems and Wall St. and drug companies MAKE too much money and are taking the money we pay for health care out of health care!

The only people who are going to speak for the health care needs and interests of the vast majority American people are those people themselves. Demand of your politicians that they commit to single-payer improved and expanded Medicare for All, demand that they pursue policies that actually get more primary care doctors out in practice by decreasing the payment prejudice for subspecialists and banning completely the corporate practice of medicine.

And if they don’t, vote them out!

 

*Joshua Freeman, Health, Medicine, and Justice: Designing a fair and equitable healthcare system, Copernicus, 2015.

Being blown off by health care can cost you your life...

Dealing with corporations is hard. Robots answer your calls, but not your questions. They are programmed to give you the information the company wants you to have, not the answers you need. It is very difficult to ever find a “monitored” email address to write to. It is like they don’t want to hear from you (except in the ubiquitous and totally structured “tell us how we’re doing” requests). Charges (as I experienced recently) are posted to your credit card immediately. Refunds, even when they agree to one, can take 45 days (by policy).

People, on the other hand, are almost always good and helpful. If you have the time and patience and willingness to scream “representative” at the phone often enough to actually get one, they mostly are polite, empathic, and usually resolve your problem (unless such resolution is prohibited by company policy). At least they answer your questions. It is amazing but not surprising that companies make it so hard to get to them. After all, they may help you out. Which is not what the company wants; they want your money and you be gone! Robots are also cheaper, thus increasing profit (and unemployment).

And so it is with healthcare. In which case it can be a disaster. I don’t mean that the waste of your time and money with other corporations is ok, or even just bad, or that it cannot financially be a disaster. But in health care we are talking about the health and even lives of you and your family. If you can’t get hold of your health care providers, you can’t get seen and cared for, or get the information that you need to do what you need to do, or to be seen elsewhere. This is, again, not the fault of or the result of the actions of the actual people who care for you, who if you can get in to see them or speak to them on the phone are usually very helpful. It is the fault of the system that is structured to prevent you from getting to them, because less use by you results in more profit for them.

That, of course, is at the provider level. At the insurer level, we enter a whole new region of Bizarro World. You get insurance. You find a provider. You see your provider. They recommend a treatment plan. You agree. Now the insurance company, which has a policy requiring “prior authorization” for virtually everything, denies payment. There may not be a good, or even any, medical reason for denying payment, and, if you appeal, they may pay because, after all, there is good medical reason. But denial as a first line response is great -- for them. Most people don’t appeal. They often don’t know that they can, or how to. So, for the insurer, problem solved. Of course, their problem was that they were going to have to pay money, and now they don’t. Your problem? Not solved. And your problem was your health, treatment for your disease. Whoops.

Prior authorization is an effective tool used by insurers to not pay for your care. It is more ubiquitous in “managed care” plans (HMOs, PPOs) than in open insurance plans. Of course, the latter are getting much rarer. It is cheaper for your employer to enroll you in a managed care plan. (Noticing a theme here?) Medicaid the (almost always dreadfully inadequate) public state/federal partnership for covering the poor is mostly (41 states including DC) turned over to managed care. One of the last bastions for fee-for-service, Medicare (the federal insurance plan for the aged, blind, and disabled) is quickly moving in that direction, with over 50% of Medicare patients not enrolled in actual Medicare but rather in “Medicare Advantage” (sic) programs, essentially private HMO-type plans paid for with Medicare funds. Now Medicare patients too can experience the advantages of managed care (like eyeglasses and gym memberships) as well as the disadvantages (like limited provider networks and denials of payment when you actually get sick).

A lot of the burden on privately-insured patients is demonstrated in research by Sukreth A. Shashikumer et al. in Financial Burden of Health Care in the Privately Insured US Population,
JAMA Internal Medicine, May 28, 2024, and summarized in the Health Justice Monitor.  

Among low-income families, mean total health care spending was $3163 in 2007 and $3247 in 2019. Low-income families’ medical burden was 23.5% in 2007 and 26.4% in 2019.  Among higher-income families, mean total health care spending increased from $4071 in 2007 to $5239 in 2019. Higher-income families’ medical burden was 5.4% in 2007 and 6.5% in 2019.

It’s bad for everyone but is, as always, worse for lower income people. This is also described in detail in a recent article by the Associated Press’ Tom Murphy, “Being a patient is getting harder in a strained and complex US health care system” (June 2, 2024), which describes the direct negative impact of insurance company denials on people’s health. The article discusses how some coverage for patient navigators helps, but the core problem is that is in the interest of the insurer to not spend money. Some MA plans like to say that they are enhancing health equity by covering a lot of low-income and minority people. Of course, this is only because the up-front costs are less. Those people pay when they get sick not only with dollars (co-pays, deductibles) but with their health (limited networks, denial of care).

And the majority of Medicaid recipients are children, and they are not immune from being denied care by their insurance companies, as revealed in a report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) and described by Wendell Potter in his “Health Care Un-covered” substack. It reports that insurers use both prior authorization and denial of payment for services, called EPSDT (Early Prevention, Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment) that the law REQUIRES be provided!

Contrasting traditional (real) Medicare with Medicare Advantage is useful here. You pay into Medicare your whole working life. When you are old enough and receive it, traditional Medicare pays for the services you receive (with some important limits, mainly only 80% of hospitalizations, requiring a Medigap plan). Medicare Advantage however, receives the money for your care from Medicare up front. Their incentive, then, is to keep it, by spending as little as possible on your care. That’s it in a nutshell. It is described in more depth in the report from Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), “Taking Advantage: How corporate health insurers harm America’s seniors.”

It is awful how badly corporations treat people. The laws and regulations need to be changed, to require them to provide the goods and services they have been paid for, and to make access for concerns or complaints, including access to actual people, easy. But completely different rules need to be in place for healthcare. If I can’t get through to most companies until Monday, I can live with that. If my credit card company keeps me going through the hoops on the phone for a half hour or more before I can talk to a person, I am only wasting time. But if this happens when I am trying to access health care, I can get very sick or die! Waiting 6 hours to be seen in the ER is not the answer. Neither are prior authorization, denials, and delays, for sick children, vulnerable seniors, poor people, or any of us.

What can we do? Write and call our congresspeople and demand that they eliminate profit-making insurers from healthcare. Perhaps some are not stupid (believing what lobbyists tell them, such as that Medicare Advantage increases equity) or corrupt (gleefully accepting those lobbyists contributions) and actually care about the health of their constituents.

Tell them to sign on to the Improved and Expanded Medicare for All bills in the House (Pramila Jayapal and Debbie Dingell, primary sponsors) and Senate (Bernie Sanders), and to sign the Patients Over Profits pledge being promoted by National Nurses United and other organizations.

Or you won’t vote for them.

"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.

The problems with our US 'Healthcare' system are well documented. We need to start with the solution!

Many sources of news have provided information that should be shocking on the abuses of the US “healthcare” industry. They include newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post and the Guardian, non-profit policy organizations like the Commonwealth Fund and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), and many smaller podcasts, substacks, and blogs (well, like this one). The rapacious profit-taking by corporations from dollars ostensibly allocated to provide our healthcare by the federal and state governments (through Medicare and Medicaid), our employers and, not least, ourselves, is regularly siphoned off for profits and administrative costs (like multi-million dollar C-suite salaries).

That this continues to happen and is built into the way our “system” (or better “non-system”) works seems to completely mystify our government and policy wonks. Their response is a hodge-podge of regulations that seek to try in some way to limit the negative health effects of our system, and to limit the number of people who are unable to access care because they have little money, no insurance, poor quality insurance, or have been excluded for reasons such as prior disease. The obvious solution – one single-payer health insurance system that automatically includes every single person of every age – has been anathema to them, despite the overwhelming evidence of it being pretty successful in every other developed country. And, even when far from perfect, always better than the US in terms of health access, health outcomes, and cost. We presume the reason is, essentially, corruption – that, as a result of getting fat and wealthy at the public (and our private) trough, these corporations give lots of money to politicians.

Just a few recent examples of what is wrong with not having single payer:

·        The NY Times reports on a “glitch” in many states incorrectly disenrolling children from Medicaid. Whoops.

 

·        The Healthcare Un-Covered substack takes a good long look a the practices of health insurance companies.

In the “good old days”–let’s call that period pre-2008–the majority of commercial insurance was full-risk: increases came out of payor profitability rather than employers’ and consumers’ pockets, and patients were protected from high out-of-network/out-of-pocket costs. In 15-20 years, everything has changed.  A lot.

Sure has. Its “poster child”, United Health Group, makes lots of money on its insurance business per se, denying people (whether on “regular” insurance or on Medicare-substitute plans like Medicare Advantage). Even more, it is making its most money on its owned physician practice subsidiary, Optum, as well as their pharmacy benefit mangers, using what is called “intercompany eliminations” to have one of its subsidiaries pay more to another of its subsidiaries than to competitors. Plus the Optum practice groups do not have the caps and regulations affecting the insurance group.

Practically, this means UnitedHealth Networks can pay its own physicians, UCCs, ASCs and the care delivery sites it owns above market rates–through something called intercompany elimination–then starve other providers with low rates. This accomplishes two things: it makes the starving providers more likely to sell their practices to Optum, and it allows UnitedHealth to post amazing profitability and stay under federal MLR caps. This is what we call “a good problem” in business.

Good problem for United Health. Big, bad problem for everyone else, including the providers in other groups and mostly the people (that is the English word for “patients”) who seek care.

·        The administration announces the first 10 incredibly-overpriced drugs that Medicare will negotiate the prices of.  Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices is one of the most popular issues in the US, across party lines; KFF found ‘in a survey late last year, 89 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans said they favored the plank of the Inflation Reduction Act that authorizes negotiations.’ Pharmaceutical companies of course push back, with completely bullshit claims that it will limit the number of new drugs. What it will, of course, threaten, is not whether they make a profit, but only the incredibly amount of money these companies are raking out of the economy in grossly excess profit. One good example of the vicious, avaricious abuses is found in The Lever, “Big Pharma’s American Con”, documenting how they rip us off while charging much less in the regulated environments in other countries.

·        The new administration regulations on nursing home staffing have angered both the operators (whose costs will go up, and also have trouble finding staff – at the salaries they pay) and the patient-advocacy groups who point out that they are far too little (patients have to be seen by someone 33 min a day??).

·        And on and on.

What do all these issues – and many more -- have in common? Well, of course, they are manifestations of insatiable and unregulated greed by corporations, and the willingness of our government to allow money that is supposed to be for our health go into corporate pockets. But they also have in common the fact that they can only exist in the absence of a single, rational, health insurance system for the American people. What can we do? We can – and I have, in this post and in many others – document and decry the absolute ripoff of the American people. For example, Medicare Advantage, which is great if you are pretty healthy and doing well, but not so much if you are sick and they deny you care, that are funded (even overfunded, paid more per recipient than is given to traditional Medicare) with the dollars that you have contributed over your working life to the Medicare trust fund. Of course, it is facilitated by the revolving door with government functionaries who are supposed to be regulating them but don’t, and facilitate their greed, and are rewarded by leaving the government and going to work for them for beaucoup bucks. One example is Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressmen who chaired the committee that passed Medicare Part D and included a prohibition on Medicare negotiating drug prices, who became CEO of PhRMA. Or Tom Scully, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service director who oversaw  the development of privatized Medicare, who went on to join a major health private-equity firm and made out like the bandits he and they are, as detailed in American Prospect. The list of what is wrong seems endless.

So, I think, it is time to stop leading with all the skullduggery, rapacious, thievery, failure of public trust, and outright killing of people, and start with the solution. A single-payer health system. Everybody in, nobody out. Birth to death. No one is excluded, and no one can be “thrown out”. It covers the same things for everyone, regardless of income. If it is something people need for their health, it is covered; if it is unneeded, frivolous, or harmful it is not. Glasses, hearing aids, mental health, dental, long-term care. No out of pocket costs.

How can we pay for this? See above, all the money going to not-health-care. It would cost much less! Do not let your legislators off the hook. For example, Phoenix congressmen Ruben Gallego has co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation for years. Now he is running for Senate against wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing Democrat-turned-Independent Kysten Sinema and whatever yahoo the GOP drags up. But this year he has not signed on to the Medicare for All bill, HR 3421. I have made it clear in response to his daily solicitations that unless he does, no more money from me.

Demand a universal healthcare insurance system. Now.

Fantastic (& fantastical) hospital charges: The industry + insurers + Pharma making money hand over fist!

On March 15, 2009, in “Bargaining down the medical bills”,

I told the story of my hernia surgery – outpatient, in at 7 am, home by noon – and the $10,000 hospital (not doctor) charge. My insurance company paid $1,600, told me to pay $400, and the hospital wrote off the $8,000 as “contractual adjustment”. But if I was uninsured I would have gotten a $10,000 bill!

That was outrageous. Not so much the amazingly high charge, rather the fact that they were willing to accept $2,000 from an insured person, while they would have dunned and bankrupted an uninsured one, someone more likely to have less money! Of course, that would only be true if they had agreed to do such an elective surgery on an uninsured person in the first place.

Things have, apparently, not gotten better. Maybe worse. I recently had another outpatient surgical procedure (different hospital, different town) and the hospital – again, not doctor’s – charge was over $69,000! I was there for a few hours! Now I have Medicare, and a Medicare supplement plan, so I paid none of it. Medicare paid $2400, 80% of their approved charge for that procedure, and the supplement plan paid the rest. But $69,000 as a charge? I thought that the old one, charging $10,000 for a procedure that the insurer would pay $2000 for, was bad, but charging $69,000 for a procedure that you know Medicare has approved for less that 4% of that? What is the point?

Maybe an billionaire, or a royal from another country, will show up at this hospital and be willing to pay $69,000 in cash. Dream on. But the vast majority of the people that you would bill this amount would be uninsured because they couldn’t afford insurance. And the hospitals do not expect to collect anywhere near that amount from them, but they will keep billing them, and ruin their credit, and eventually sell off the bill to a collection agency for about 10 cents on the dollar. That agency will increase the dunning.

So what is the point of having such a high charge on the “chargemaster” (the name for the pricelist no one sees) if the only people who are going to be billed that much are those who are least likely to be able to pay? There has to be a reason, and there are in fact several, which include hoping that some insurer will, if not pay the whole amount, pay a fixed percentage of the billed charge, and so the higher the charge, the higher the reimbursement. But, of course, this makes no sense with Medicare (which has fixed approved charges that it will pay for procedures regardless of what the institution charges) or with insurers for which they have already negotiated reimbursement; in fact, the latter is usually determined as a “multiple of Medicare”, e.g., 2 or 3 times what Medicare pays. There are other arcane reasons, many of which have to do with the complex interplay between the “providers” (hospitals) and the payors (insurance companies), and who has the most clout in a certain area in a given situation. Assuredly, the interest of the patient does not enter into this discussion.

[I was going to add the following paragraph as a comment, but I thought it belonged here...]

A colleague pointed out another important reason why the prices for services in “non-profit” hospitals are so high. They don’t pay taxes because they are (supposed to, but often don’t) deliver “community benefit”. One way this is measured is reducing the debt of those who can’t pay! So if you can take, say $3000 from an insurer for a procedure but your “official” charge is $10,000, then if you accept $3000 from an uninsured person you can call the $7000 “community benefit”! And if your charge is ostensibly $69,000, you can meet the requirements for your tax-free status without losing a dollar…

 

Trying to find a pricelist with any meaning is almost impossible, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I go to the dentist in Mexico (I don’t have, but it accepts, US dental insurance). They can tell you before they do anything exactly what it will cost. Cleaning, $60. Gum trimming, $160. Same for repairing cavities, making crowns (on site, in an hour) or implants. No surprises. In the US, not even the doctors or hospital administrators know what the actual price will be for the patient.

This absurd pricing is yet another example of a “healthcare” (or maybe “healthdon’tcare”) system that is predicated on making money for the power players, and the technical details about which of them benefits most (sometimes, in the case of inner-city and rural hospitals, suffers most) dominates the policy discussion and political rule making. Politicians like to talk about regulating health insurers (and sometimes hospitals), and for sure drug companies because of their exploitation of patients. They rarely, however, do anything much about it. When they do something, it almost always 1) is very watered down by “compromises” with the big-contribution lobbyists from the regulated industries, and 2) when it does help people by reducing their cost, it always continues to make money for the (maybe) regulated companies, just a little less exorbitant than before. 

 Drug costs are a prime example of both. The legislation that created the Medicare drug plan (Medicare Part D) passed during the George W. Bush administration. The positive benefit to patients was that, prior to it, many Medicare patients did not have coverage for their prescription drugs and often went broke trying to buy them; it required all Medicare recipients to have a plan.  The obvious benefit to the corporations was that now all Medicare recipients had to buy drug coverage from an insurance company, and drug companies would now get paid for all these people’s medications. A less obvious, but incredibly important benefit to drug manufacturers was that the Part D legislation forbid Medicare from negotiating drug prices! So big bonus – everyone has to have drug coverage and they have to pay what we charge! Medicare is the only civilian purchaser of drugs (and other healthcare services) large enough to force prices down, as they do for hospital services (see the anecdotes at the start of this piece). But that they might do the same for drug prices really worried Big Pharma – after all, the VA and TriCare, the only other purchasers big enough to have real clout, did negotiate lower drug prices for their members, and this decreased their profits. Indeed, in most states Medicaid negotiates drug prices, and the manufacturers don’t like that at all. Luckily (for them), they have hundreds of highly paid lobbyists in DC, and make millions in contributions to politicians, so they were able to get this great deal. A great example is former Rep. Billy Tauzin (R, LA) who was chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee when Part D was passed, and, “On January 2005, the day after his term in Congress ended, he began work as the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). a powerful trade group for pharmaceutical companies.” (Wikipedia)

Drug company profiteering is also a good example of the second point, that drug companies always continue to do fine and make big profits even after a reform has decreased them a little. A more current example is the push (including from the Biden administration) to lower the cost of insulin, a drug that is literally a daily necessity of life for those with Type 1 diabetes and very commonly needed for the much larger number of people with Type 2 diabetes. The 2020 Prescription Drug Pricing Report from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services states that

The average gross manufacturer price for a standard unit of insulin in 2018 was more than ten times the price in a sample of 32 foreign countries:$98.70 in the U.S., compared with $8.81 in the 32 non-U.S. OECD countries for which we have prescription drug data. The U.S. prices for the mix of insulin used in the U.S. were 8.1 times prices paid in all non-U.S. OECD countries combined. !!

Verywell Health reports that “As of March 2022, the price for a vial of insulin ranges from $50 to over $1,000, and a pack of pens ranges from $45 to over $600.” News organizations such as the BBC have reported on the impact of this on actual people. No wonder limiting the price of this life-saving drug is something concerning to both Republicans and Democrats. President Trump talked about it a lot, and President Biden is actually moving to limit the cost. With the administration-backed Inflation Reduction Act, not only did the price get controlled, but Eli Lilly (one of the 3 major manufacturers of insulin for the US, along with Sanofi-Aventis and Novo Nordisk, and the company that was given the patent for insulin from Banting and Best for $1) announced a 70% reduction in their charges. The White House briefing fact sheet on this legislation’s effect is interesting, and contains some information on who in the US has diabetes. The answer is a lot of people, over 11% of the US population, and minority groups, the poor, and the poorly educated have an even greater burden of this disease.

                                                                  

But don’t cry for Eli Lilly, or the other insulin, or any drug, manufacturers. That they will be doing fine and continuing to make huge profits after the price restrictions go into effect is further evidence that before they were making outrageous, unjustifiable, and indeed (given that insulin is needed to keep many people alive) murderous profits.

It is hard to discuss rapacious profiteering in health(don’t)care without drug companies, but let us not lose sight of the fact that the insurance companies and the big hospital and “health systems” are also making out like bandits, ripping us off, and endangering our health.

Technology and other obstacles to getting health care: it’s capitalism, of course!

I saw this cartoon posted recently on Facebook, and am sorry that I can find neither the cartoonist nor the original site of publication. It is, as is the case with most good humor, both funny and sad, in that it cuts close to the reality of the lives of people seeking health care. This particular cartoon emphasizes the technology obstacles to receiving care, which represent another layer of obstruction beyond insurance, distance, availability of providers, and, generally, a system that favors the corporations involved in health care over the people (also known as ‘patients’) seeking it, or the clinicians who provide it. One of the biggest complaints and stressors (and reasons for physician burn-out) is the Electronic Medical (or Health) Record which consumes enormous amounts of clinician time inputting data (many clinicians report at least a 1:1 ratio of charting on-line to seeing people).

It take so much time and is so onerous in large part because it involves, in addition to charting the note recording what the person was complaining of (“Subjective”), what was found on exam, lab, imaging (“Objective”), what was diagnosed (Assessment) and what was done (Plan), many click boxes have to be filled out to record specific data digitally. While this includes things that are sensible because they enhance easy retrieval (e.g., a flu shot), and things that are otherwise ostensibly documenting preventive care for certain issues (e.g., alcohol or tobacco use), they also include many things that ensure compliance with specific government regulations or insurance companies rules, and extensive and complex documentation and clicking to ensure that maximum reimbursement is received by the employer.

There are benefits to having data stored in a searchable and easily retrievable digital format. However, on balance, patients find their access to medical care, already strained by financial, time,  and distance constraints, further limited by technologic obstacles, and doctors find them terribly burdensome and of less utility,  but yet they proliferate. Patients do not usually want to blame their doctors or other clinicians, most of whom they value and trust, but cannot understand why those obstacles have been put in place.

Let us go back to “maximum reimbursement is received by the employer”. Most doctors and other clinicians are no longer in solo or small-group practices, but rather are employed by corporations (both for-profit and ostensibly not-for-profit) or by large groups that, even when physician owned or managed, have the same incentive to maximize reimbursement, even at the cost of efficient use of the clinician’s (not to mention the patient’s!) time and effort. Of course, for the corporation, the most efficient use of a physician’s time is that which generates the greatest reimbursement, which is not necessarily the same as that which generates the greatest marginal health benefit for the patient. This is an issue I have written about many times before, but it bears repeating. People who are willing to vote against an administration because gasoline prices are high, even though that is a result of corporate greed and is most supported by the administration’s opponents, are not always ready to think deeply. Indeed, physicians and other clinicians retain a great deal of respect and admiration despite the violence done to people in their name (usually not, of course mainly physical violence, although making it difficult or impossible for folks to access health care can certainly result in physical damage!)

People often want to take credit for what is seen as good, and to deflect blame onto others for what is seen as bad. This is a particularly common trait in those called “leaders”, although they are often just bosses, not leaders. It is so common in this group, in fact, that we are often shocked when a person in a position of real authority takes responsibility for their – and their subordinates’ – mistakes, and gives credit to others for accomplishments; this is why Harry Truman’s sign “The Buck Stops Here” became so famous. In the case of health care, such duplicity by the “leaders” often takes the form of the corporation wrapping itself in the mantle of “caring for and about your health”, while actually creating obstacles (including those technological ones) to accessing care, particularly if you are not a high-profit-margin patient, and even blaming those doctors, nurses, and others who actually do provide care for the problem.

In a different context, this theme has been replicated in Mexico, by the government rather than the corporation. Doctors (and their patients) in rural areas are being kidnapped, killed, and otherwise abused by drug gangs, as reported in the NY Times. In a cynical political move to seem to address this problem, the government is talking about bringing in 500 Cuban doctors. ‘“They [that is, the rural physicians] forget about a patient’s primary right, which is to be cared for wherever they are, and it’s because of this that we needed to resort to contracting foreigners,” Dr. Jorge Alcocer Varela, Mexico’s secretary of health, told reporters at a recent news conference.’ Safe in his cabinet office in Mexico City. This generated an appropriate response: ‘The announcement about the Cuban doctors provoked outrage among many Mexican doctors, who said the problem was not a lack of physicians or an unwillingness to work in rural communities, but the life-threatening conditions they must work under.’

The lower your own risk, the easier (but more ignoble) it to criticize those who are at risk. The less value you (as, say, a CEO) bring to the actual provision of health care, the more you can feel free to blame those who do, or who criticize the way that you have organized systems to maximize your profit, not to improve people’s health. Such CEOs love to brag about their great programs that bring highly-reimbursed care to well-insured people, but are rarely willing to spend much on high-value (as opposed to high-profit) care for the most needy.

Healthcare is scarcely unique in having been seemingly overtaken by systems that have the goal of limiting human-to-human interaction and replacing it with often difficult-to-navigate (especially for the older or less computer-savvy person) human-to-machine systems. “They” want you to download their app (after upgrading your operating system), go to their website, and do anything that does not require them to pay a person who can actually help you. Almost no actual people prefer that, but we’re usually stuck. When they can’t force you off the phone and on to the computer, they can sure make you wait – at your doctor’s, at the pharmacy, at the airport – and maybe you’ll give up. It does not just happen in health care, but when stakes are your life and health, it seems particularly bad.

Just remember who and what is at fault; usually not the doctors and other clinicians, who actually want to help you, but corporate capitalism, motivated by greed.