HMOs Call for Universal Health Coverage!

In a surprising move (for those with short memories or a poor understanding of the state of health insurance in the U.S.), large managed care companies have begun calling publicly for universal health insurance coverage for all Americans. Top insurance executives from companies like UnitedHealth Group, Blue Shield of California, the Health Insurance Association of America, and the American Association of Health Plans are openly decrying the growing number of uninsured Americans, and are advocating for radical change in the American health care system in order to provide everyone with health coverage.

Several plans have been proposed by these organizations, all of which call for a combination of public and private funding for universal coverage.

DrRich Comments:

Don't panic; this is just one more sign of the End Times.

HMOs and other managed care organizations plainly see that their salad days are over, that the "managed care" gambit for solving the health care crisis has turned out to be a cruel joke, and that if things keep going this way much longer, the only option will be for a single-payer health care system run by the Feds.  This "solution," of course, will render them all extinct.

So even though a public-private-funded universal plan will ultimately place them even more under the thumb of federal regulators than they are today, and will ultimately spell the end of most big insurance companies, it would keep the ball in play for a few more years - and who knows? - may give them enough time to figure out a new, more permanent business model.  Anything to forestall a single-payer plan.

And for those with longer memories, this is not the first time big insurance has proposed universal health coverage.  The industry was initially on board with the Clinton's health care plan in the early '90s.  They viewed this plan as a way of gaining a huge new source of income (insurance premiums, paid by the government, for the millions of uninsured patients.)  It was only when they finally got a look at the monstrous plan devised by Mrs. Clinton that they turned against it.

Possibly big insurance is gambling that, since some kind of increased government control seems inevitable, they might have a better chance of getting the best deal possible at a time when the Clintonians are no longer in control.  Better to push for it now - who knows what the next election might bring?

April, 2003

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