Strike Against Private Health Insurance
[posted 2003.11.01]
 

THE PLAN:	1) All Americans stop buying health insurance.
	2) Americans make an effort to use fewer health care resources, especially through preventative measures.
	3) People seeking medical treatment inform the hospital/clinic/other health care facility that they will pay all costs out of their own pocket and proceed to negotiate fair market prices.

THE RATIONALE:

Private health insurance doesn't work. In the beginning, insurance companies told us that if we paid them affordable premiums, they would ensure that we would never go broke paying for bad accidents and costly diseases. But over time, health care costs went up. Realizing they were billing distant, faceless insurance companies with deep pockets rather than their own neighbors, doctors and hospitals started jacking up prices to levels that the normal market of private out-of-pocket buyers could not bear. We insured users of health care services didn't help matters any: with most of the cost for medical services coming out of the insurance companies' coffers rather than directly our of our wallets, we figured we'd get our money's worth out of our insurance policies and went to the hospital for more check-ups, more procedures, and more medicines, thus driving up demand and costs.

Now costs are high enough for everything medical, even basic things like having a baby, that no one but the very wealthy can afford health care without insurance. But in a tight economy, the insurance companies, with their primary obligation to maximize profits, cannot afford to insure everyone. Paradoxically, they can only remain profitable by offering their services primarily to healthy people who don't need their services. A policyholder may faithfully pay premiums throughout her life, but the moment she comes down with some serious malady, she becomes a risk to profits, and the insurance company will either jack up her premiums to budget-busting levels or drop her coverage completely.

Now we might try solving this problem by following the lead of nearly every other major industrial country and implementing some version of socialized medicine. A recent poll indicated 62% of Americans would like the government to implement a single-payer system like Canada's. Unfortunately, the 38% of Americans who oppose that idea likely include the executives and lobbyists of the insurance industry, who enjoy disproportionate influence over our elected officials. National health care thus has no traction among the powers that be. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle himself told me at a political appearance in Madison this summer that universal health care won't pass any time soon, that at best we might be able to get some sort of regional risk pools going to try bringing health care costs down.

I prefer not to hold my breath waiting for political will to overcome lobbying and campaign donations in Washington. Perhaps we could solve the problems ourselves by kicking our addiction to high-cost health care. How about we go on strike? I know we can't go on strike from getting sick -- although we could all walk more, drink less pop and more water, wear hats in the winter, and do other little things to keep ourselves healthier. But we could go on strike against the insurance companies. Imagine what would happen if no one had health insurance. Hospitals could not charge the same high prices for their services, not if they wanted to stay in business. Hospitals would have to charge prices the market could bear -- i.e., prices that typical working families could afford. We could pull billions of dollars currently poured into health insurance and inflated health care costs and divert them to other needs.

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© 2003-2005 Cory Allen Heidelberger