The Government has never gotten anything right. I see. Of course that is pure rhetoric. The private sector insurers have gotten it right, but only in one matter, that's ensuring that their shareholders and corporate officers are well paid. Of course no one mentions that this is at the cost of lives. I think you should introduce yourself to three words that really should incite fear, medical cost ratio. MCR = Costs/Premiums. Cigna's MCR is currently 82.1%. This is actually quite scary when you realize the amount of money involved here. "Good" MCR is achieved by ensuring that you don't spend as much as you ought to on medical care for your customers. When I pay a premium I don't pay it so only 80% of it is used in my and others care, I mean they have the money to cover a lot more than they do and they choose not to and yet premiums continue to rise while their MCR continues to drop, that points to the obvious, they're taking in more money, but not paying more out. Take a peek at this, it'll show you how messed up it really is, http://www.theverdengroup.com/uploaded/Verden Report_SE_Cost vs Profit in Managed Care Today.pdf ... And here you can enjoy watching the profits grow at cigna while so many are still uninsured or undercared for by their provider. "Cigna reported a second-quarter profit of $435 million, or $1.58 a share, compared with $272 million, or 96 cents a share, a year earlier. " http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090730-719032.html .. And I did mention rising premiums. As the premiums go up, people cannot afford insurance, medical costs go up as well as the economy took a nose dive, http://oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/2930/Health_Care_Gap_-_OECD_Observer_No_273_June_2009_.html This is a nice short on the current healthcare gap in america versus other countries, if that doesn't bother at least just a minute bit while you're espousing the wonderful free market provider care market, then I don't know what to say, you simply don't really care about Americans in general, because all those "mom and pops" and "average American's" you keep cheering on at thoe town hall meetings, they're not the ones lying in a hospital bed living their last few weeks because their insurer decided chemo was too expensive to keep paying for. Those are the American's it'd be nice to hear from, but the insurers won on two fronts, 1 they can continue to reduce their MCR by denying treatment and 2 they can keep their naysayers who NOW know how it really is quiet, since they're just gonna die anyhow.
At the end of it all every dime that passes out as profit is blood money. They go out of their way to stop payment, disqualify treatments that are known to work, cancel policies for nonsense reasons, all for money. People die because of this, this is the insurer's free market. A free for all of what approaches to me negligent manslaughter for profit.