In case you missed it, the latest news makes clear that corporate health insurance continues to suck, with fine print exclusions, claims denials and sky-high premiums that show no sign of abating after years of double-digit increases. The result? Patient suffering. Meanwhile, state governments seek to save money on Medicaid by compounding the many obstacles that impoverished Americans must surmount to get coverage. Burdening the impoverished and sick with work requirements is a false solution based on a faulty framing of the underlying causes of high healthcare costs. It’s time to stop blaming the victims and start blaming our so-called leaders.
Surafel Tsega, MD, a physician and single-payer supporter, shares the unbelievable yet all-too-true story of a health insurer’s refusal to cover the cost of his patient’s oxygen. Excerpts from his recent blog in KevinMD.com:
She said her insurance wouldn’t cover her oxygen.
I didn’t believe her. She needed it. She had an irreversible lung disease that made walking a block feel like a hundred-yard sprint. It was no trouble showing she needed it– her blood oxygen levels would drop below 85 percent with any activity (normal levels are between 95 to 100 percent). Surely this was a minor administrative hurdle.
Unfortunately, I found myself coming back the following day having to tell her she was right. Her insurance company considered oxygen a “durable medical equipment,” and wouldn’t cover it.
With Obamacare well into its eighth year, it’s obvious that we still have a long way to go to achieve the universal coverage and health care accessibility that was promised.
Then, a just-released report by Fierce Healthcare explains just how much health insurance CEOs are making off the suffering of the American people:
CEOs at the nation’s largest insurance companies earned $342.6 million in 2017, with the highest-paid executive bringing home $83.2 million, more than 1,400 times what the average employee brought home.
The top eight insurance companies paid out twice as much money to their top executives as they did the previous year thanks to notable churn in C-suites across the industry, according to an analysis of SEC filings by FierceHealthcare. The review included Aetna, Cigna, Molina, WellCare, Centene, UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Anthem.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports on state government efforts to cut healthcare costs by requiring sick people to get jobs before they can qualify for Medicaid. Arkansas is the third state to impose work requirements on the needy, following Kentucky and Indiana. Predictably, the consequence of limiting Medicaid access is that more people will lose their health insurance. Arkansas’ recent Medicaid work requirement is anticipated to result in 60,000 people losing health insurance.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Arkansas on Monday became the third U.S. state to require that Medicaid recipients work or participate in employment activities as a condition of receiving health insurance as the Trump administration continues to approve state requests that fundamentally change the 50-year-old program.
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