If you only have a few hours to check out Wendell Potter's Deadly Spin, it is essential that you read the chapter on the so-called consumer-driven, high-deductible "junk insurance" that the big-profit health insurance industry is pushing off on Americans right now.
Potter makes the argument that health insurance companies really don't care about doing what's best for health -- which would be allowing people to access care when they need it, not creating impediments to care with ginormous deductibles -- but instead they only care about their own survival. So, when first-dollar plans (those where you pay a co-pay and have a tiny deductible) became too expensive to allow for big-profits, they "innovated" and created "consumer-driven plans." These plans have been proven to lead to people delaying and denying care -- you get the idea, a mole that could have been removed, becomes raging skin cancer.
Well, this week Humana CEO Michael B. McCallister is saying Americans are too greedy and stupid to deserve health care like the rest of the developed world receives. More below the fold.
First, McCallister (kind of sounds like McCallASSter to me) tells us we have no idea what valuable or quality care looks like in the health care marketplace. We're just too dense!
Q: You've said your experience with hospitals offered a broad view of the health care system and gave you a chance to learn where the real weaknesses are. What's an example?
A: Foremost is the fact that consumers have absolutely no clue what price or quality looks like in health care.
Well, Michael, the reason that we don't shop around for health care like we shop around for lawnmowers at Home Depot is because when your leg is gushing blood and hanging on by a few pieces of skin in the ER, you don't really have a chance to say, "Hey, I'm not sure if I like the way you're pricing the bandages here at this hospital. Can you drive me around to all of the others within 20 miles to comparison shop?"
Michael then goes on to call us "stupid" for not understanding a two-inch thick hospital bill from a big-profit hospital chain:
People would seek out care, and they never asked the questions what does this cost, what are my options? They just sort of stumble through the system. Then as a hospital CEO, they would come in my office and say, "Explain this bill to me," and it would be two inches thick.
You'd see the frustration on their faces when they're trying to understand what's happening to them, both clinically and financially.
Perhaps the reason we don't understand two-inch thick hospital bills, you Jack Ass, is because two-inch thick hospital bills should not fucking exist! How DARE YOU, Michael, blame the American citizen for the fact that people have giant hospital bills? It's not our fault for not "shopping around," it's your fault for forcing us to endure a health care system predicated on greed and pleasing Wall Street masters.
So, Michael's solution to the chaos? Force Americans to spend more of their money so Humana and the other big-profit insurers can spend less of their shareholders' money.
A: In the rest of the economy, you have incredible power in the hands of the consumers. Bad services and bad products essentially get crushed. The consumers can be quite powerful when they apply their knowledge and their buying power to anything.
I just think when we have a financial stake in decision making, we pay a little more attention to what our options are, we're going to demand higher quality, we're going to demand better service and the rest of the economy has taught us that.
I wrote yesterday about the importance of progressives engaging in better "message framing" relating to the single-payer fight. Well, here's a prime example: we need to call out asshole insurance company CEOs for framing "junk insurance" as the key to fixing our health care crisis!
In Deadly Spin, Wendell Potter describes how when insurance company executives questioned how "consumer-driven," high-deductible plans could really be good for anyone but the healthy and wealthy, the insurance company CEO arguing for their value responded, "You need to drink the Kool-Aid."
So, this is where the American health care system stands after "monumental reform": corporate CEOs with zero medical experience, like Michael, telling Americans we are too stupid and too greedy to deserve the opportunity to see the doctor of our choice when we think we need to see the doctor.
Let's call a bear shitting in the woods a bear shitting in the woods: Humana isn't trying to fix the health care system with these junk, high-deductible plans, it is trying to increase already obscene profits by denying our care in a more aggressive way than we have ever seen before -- and showing no shame in insulting the hell out of us as it happens!
Lastly, Michael Moore (the good Michael) treats us to an example of Humana making "smart" medical decisions in the "best interest" of its members:
Oh, and by the way Michael (the evil CEO Michael), can you please stop spending our premium dollars on hair dye?