HOW IRONIC: Corporate health insurance consultants blame high medical costs on our "bad habits" and "overuse" of system.

Meanwhile, big health insurance companies rake in billion dollar profits as Americans go underinsured.

An item I just came across in POLITICO Future Pulse has my blood boiling. 

Under the headline, “Health insurance prices set for takeoff,” is this nugget:

This year, employers may again ask their workers to pay up, given the softening economy and recent health trend surveys. Willis Towers Watson (WTW), an insurance advisory firm, found that three-quarters of health insurers believe their customers’ bad habits and overuse of the medical system are driving up costs (emphasis mine). 

WTF WTW? Of course, those overpaid and historically ineffective and inefficient folks would say that. I know because I used to be one of them.

Have the people at WTW been paying attention to the massive profits insurance companies have been reporting this year? Of course they have. (Note: the WTW survey was global in scope but included U.S. insurers.)

I wish the WTW folks and insurance company execs they surveyed had to walk a single day in the shoes of the millions of insured Americans who are now functionally uninsured because the same people who talk about their customers’ bad habits are far more to blame for health care price and premium increases than their customers. Yes, too many of us are overweight and we don’t take care of ourselves as we should. But what do you expect when both parents have to work, sometimes multiple jobs, just to put food on the table and pay for their damn health insurance?

Big Insurance wants to make their customers pay more and more–in premiums and deductibles–because that enables them to squeeze more money out of their pockets and to pay fewer medical claims. 

And as the WTW people know, Big Insurance can’t and won’t try to bring down the unit cost of medical goods (like drugs and medical devices) and services (like a stay in the hospital). It is not in Big Insurance’s best interests to even give it a good old college try. As health care costs go up, Big Insurance just jacks up premiums. That brings in billions more in revenue. 

Big Insurance has become an insatiable monster, like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, that constantly demands, “feed me, feed me!” Employers hate it but they don’t seem to think there is any way to escape from Audrey’s grip. 

If the big consulting and insurance company execs had any idea what it is like for somebody with insurance to ration their insulin, they might begin to get it. 

If they had to walk away from the pharmacy counter without their medications because of exorbitant deductibles that insurance companies insist they pay before their coverage kicks in, maybe they’d have an aha moment.

 If they only had $400 in the bank, which is the case for a high percentage of Americans, they might know what it’s like to dread opening the mailbox for fear of finding yet another bill from a hospital or doctor’s office because of the outrageously high coinsurance and copayments those insurance companies make their customers with “bad habits” shell out. 

That aha moment never comes because those execs have far more than $400 in the bank. They’re immune to their customers’ pain. And Wall Street has no compassion for execs who care about anything more than enhancing shareholder value. 

I really hope the WTW people will take a look at what I’ve been writing lately about UnitedHealth Group’s massive profits in just the third quarter of this year to understand that Big Insurance does not have to increase premiums or force insured patients to empty their bank accounts. I’d like them to pay attention, especially, to UnitedHealth’s announcement that things are looking so rosy for the company that it is raising its 2022 profit expectations. 

And it’s not just UnitedHealth Group. This week Anthem (now known as Elevance), which owns a bunch of Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, also raised its profit expectations for the year. As someone whose name was on every one of Cigna’s quarterly earnings reports for 10 years, I can assure you that that was music to the ears of shareholders and Wall Street financial analysts.

I can also assure you that WTW’s statement is part of what will be a major U.S. (and global) effort by the insurance industry and its symbiotic allies to get employers and policymakers to once again buy the crock that it is hard-working Americans, struggling to make ends meet and even find time to go to the doctor, who are the problem. No, it is not and you know it. It is greed.

That statement reminds me of how insurance company CEOs–including the ones I used to work for–insisted that we Americans needed to put more “skin in the game” because we were not paying nearly enough to stay alive.

They used that catchy phrase over and over and over to persuade employers to hop on the high-deductible bandwagon, to convince them that patients would soon have the information, time, and ability to “shop” for better deals from doctors and hospitals–and that they’d soon see premiums drop like a rock. None of that happened, of course. But even I fell for that siren song. I am sick of the role I played in perpetuating that propaganda, that lie. But I sold that snake oil. Until I couldn’t stomach it anymore.

Big Insurance, with help from its shills and other protectors of the status quo, is clearly putting that snake oil on the market again and hoping that our employers and politicians will be as gullible as they were 20 years ago when the bandwagon left the station. But here’s my pledge, to them and to you: I’m going to do all I can to keep that lie from taking hold again.

The truth is that middle-income Americans have put all the skin they have into the insurance industry’s game. They’re down to muscle and bone now. More than 100 million of us–most of whom have insurance–now have medical debt many will never pay off. That will affect generations of families, locking many into poverty. 

Sadly, too many Americans with insurance are turning to GoFundMe to beg for money from strangers to cover their out-of-pockets. And too many are filing for bankruptcy. Just so UnitedHealth and Elevance and the rest of Big Insurance can raise their profit expectations and make Wall Street happy. The happier they are, the higher the stock price goes, and the richer the C-Suite crowd gets.

This might be coming off as a screed. To me, it's more of a manifesto. But whatever, I’m going to keep calling out the lies and pointing out the greed that is destroying lives in this country every single day so that a few can live like kings and queens.

And I’m issuing an invitation to Carl Hess, WTW’s CEO: Join me in Knoxville, Tennessee, at 6 a.m. on January 13, 2023. Having gone to school there, I know it will be frigid, so wear your warmest clothes. I want you to see the thousands of people–many with health insurance–who will have been shivering patiently for hours to get inside an old building on the Tennessee Valley Fairgrounds to get free care, courtesy of Remote Area Medical and hundreds of volunteers. 

I want you to look those folks in the face and tell them they’ve gotta put more skin in the game. I want you to lecture them on their bad habits and using too much health care. Feel free to ask the CEOs of Aetna, Cigna, Elevance, Humana, and UnitedHealth to tag along. I know you all can afford it, and you can get in and out of there in a hurry on the corporate jets our premiums are paying for.