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‘It’s a death sentence’: US health insurance system is failing, say doctors

Much of the friction patients encounter when seeking medical care or assistance is fundamental to the insurance firms’ business models, according to Weisbart. “They don’t care about you, and they see you as an expense, not someone whose health needs to be improved,” he said. “The healthier you are, the more they want you to have them as their insurance, and the sicker you are, the more comfortable they are with you being dissatisfied with them and searching for a different insurance company. “Once they have that money, every time somebody has to get health care, that’s just an expense that they don’t want to let go of.” The insurance industry’s profits revolve around delaying and denying medical…

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 I Was a Health Insurance Executive. What I Saw Made Me Quit

One of my last acts before resigning was helping to plan a meeting for investors and Wall Street financial analysts — similar to the one that UnitedHealthcare canceled after Mr. Thompson’s horrific killing. These “annual investor days,” like the consumerism idea I helped spread, reveal an uncomfortable truth about our health insurance system: that shareholders, not patient outcomes, tend to drive decisions at for-profit health insurance companies.

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Health Insurance Companies are Exposed

If a person faces any serious medical condition, ideally, the best situation is to be financially stable and never have to depend on the financial decisions made by healthcare insurers. Unfortunately, that is not a realistic option for millions of Americans, especially those who are not extremely wealthy.

The long history of distrust for American insurance companies

Animosity toward insurance companies is as old as the business itself

Why Do So Many People Seem To Be Angry With Health Insurers?

Before delving into what’s wrong with the American system of health insurance, let’s not overlook what’s right with it.

Why insurance companies control your medical care

From the 1940s on, the nation’s health care system steadily developed around the faulty insurance company model. Though initially uneasy with one another, physicians and insurers worked together to strengthen and spread insurance company arrangements. They did so to demonstrate that the federal government need not interfere in health care. And their gambit worked: Physicians and insurers defeated attempts under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to reform health care.

Resources

5 of the most frustrating health insurer tactics and why they exist

Yet even for those with health insurance, coverage does not ensure access to care, much less high-quality and affordable care. Research shows that 1 in 3 Americans seeking care report delaying or forgoing treatment because of the “administrative burdens” of dealing with health insurance and the health care system, creating additional barriers beyond costs. Some of these are basic tasks, such as scheduling appointments. But others relate to strategies that health insurers use to shape the care that their patients are able to receive – tactics that are often unpopular with both doctors and patients.