San Diego Union Tribune Letters to the Editor
2:00 a.m. August 15, 2009
by the Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

A blood pressure-raising debate on health care

As a health insurance broker for 35 years, licensed with more than 100 insurance companies, I speak with insider knowledge. Insurance company profit incentive leads them to rescind coverage, deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, deny legitimate claims, hassle providers over payment for services, and other abuses too numerous to recount.
In the early 1990s, the insurance companies' expense/loss ratio was near 5 percent with 95 percent of every premium dollar spent on claims reimbursement. Today, the health insurance monopoly cartel spends 20 percent of every dollar it takes in on expenses, such as commissions, underwriting, advertising, lobbying costs, inflated executive salaries and profits to shareholders. Cost for insurance has gone up, shared costs to consumer insureds have increased, more Americans are uninsured or underinsured, but profits for insurance companies have gone way up.
There is no need for the health insurance industry. Health insurance is not a product that must be sold — everyone needs and wants it. It's idiocy that insurance companies decide who gets health care coverage, what health care claims are paid or denied, how much you pay for coverage, and that insurance companies have the power to stop your coverage when you change or lose employment.
The solution to health care reform is simple: extend government-run Medicare to all Americans. Government-run Medicare has a 3 percent expense ratio with 44 million covered and government-run VA coverage an even lower expense ratio, with 8 million covered.
Insurance company lobbyists, pharmaceutical giants, and hospital and medical interests have bought the “just say noâ€