Healthcare Hullabaloo: Logan’s Run Part II

Some people didn’t like my original “Logan’s Run” post, where I suggested that we could save nearly a Trillion dollars every year by simply euthanizing senior citizens before they put an undue burden on our health care system. They think that I went too far.

Upon further reflection, I now realize that I didn’t go far enough.

Yes, there is no doubt that our citizens in their ‘golden years’ are costing us younger folk a lot of gold. And while offing the oldsters will help the US Government balance their health care ledger, it would bring little relief to our beleaguered health insurance carriers – and that’s just not fair to them.

All across the country, health insurance executives are feeling the economic pinch. I heard a rumor last week that a Senior VP at a well-known non-profit health insurance company was considering buying a used Maybach. USED!

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a country where a highly compensated insurance executive would have to consider parking his keyster in a leather seat already deformed by some other fat cat’s butt.

Thankfully, I later learned that this was just another Urban Legend, told amongst insurance executives at their beach bonfires in Fiji, to scare each other during their semi-annual executive training seminars. The point is, this just might happen in the future if we allow our health insurance industry to continue to decline.

So, what can we do to prevent this from happening? Well, it’s easy to identify the root of the financial drain on our health insurance carriers. Succinctly, the problem is sick people.

When it comes to expenditures by health insurance carriers, by far, the greatest area of loss is dealing with sick people. You may not know it, but your health insurance carrier has an entire staff that they hire JUST TO DEAL WITH SICK PEOPLE. First, they have a whole section of professionals whose entire job is to find reasons to deny requests for ‘pre-authorizations’ whenever sick people want medicine, testing, or to see a specialist. They have an entirely different group of employees people specifically trained to ‘lose’ insurance claims, even when those claims are routed to the carrier electronically. Then, there is another entire department to answer the calls of sick people who call in to find out why their claims are not being paid. Then there is another department whose sole purpose is to find new and creative reasons for rejecting claims once they are actually ‘found’. Then, if the sick person demands that the claim be paid (sick people can get very nasty), they have another department to handle the appeal. And another department to handle the ‘second tier’ appeal. Finally, they have an entire team of ‘Medical Directors’. These brave souls are retired physicians who use their extensive medical training and experience to deny the claims of sick people. So your neurosurgeon thinks that you need brain surgery to remove that nasty tumor? Not so fast - Dr. Patel, (Retired Obstetrician/Medical Director) does not agree.

All of these people have salaries and benefits of their own, plus support staff – secretaries, janitorial staff, etc. Then there are additional costs that most people never take into consideration - I’d bet that there are at least a half dozen people just programming the voice mail system. (Voice Mail Systems are very advanced these days – most corporate systems work extremely well right off the shelf – it takes people with highly developed technical expertise to modify these systems so that don’t recognize simple words like ‘claims’, or that randomly disconnect your call.)

Yes, denying insurance claims is a very expensive business.

The solution to this problem, however, is very simple: Let’s get rid of the sick people. I’m not talking about someone with a cold or flu – I’m talking about people with long term issues like cancer, diabetes, , heart problems. etc. - these are the people who put the greatest burden on the claim-denial process.

When you think about it, this is also a humane approach to the situation. After all, who would want to suffer needlessly for 30 years with diabetes or a bad heart when they could be quickly and painlessly euthanized? Let’s follow the lead of our veterinarians, who know that it’s best to ‘put down’ a sick animal rather then let them go on suffering.

They shoot horse, don’t they?

But let’s not forget that these new rules will not apply to members of Congress or their families. Or to me or my family either. Or my friends, so you’ll want to stay on my good side and tell everyone you meet about my great blog (or else!)

This is a simple thing that we can do to help improve the profitability of our health insurance carriers. Like any solution, their will be downsides, but they will be completely offset by the upsides of tis solution. Perhaps the greatest obstacle that my plan faces is that the drugs that would typically be used to euthanize a human being are generally ‘branded’ formulations, and therefore not covered by most prescription plans.

But let’s not dwell on the negative aspects of my plan. Instead, let’s revel in the glorious upside. Health insurance carriers would be able to lay off thousands of workers and maintain, or even increase, executive compensation. The entire health insurance industry will be revitalized and simplified – under my plan, the only pre-existing condition would be ‘life’ The economy will be stimulated as companies like Aston-Martin, Rolex and Chris-Craft will see sales returning to per-recession levels. There will be a real estate boon in places like Palm Beach and Cabo.

The only thing that stands between us and this glorious re-birth of our health insurance industry is a bunch of whining sick people. A plan this good has got to catch on. So, let’s all start dumping our under performing stocks and re-invest our savings in crematoriums and cemeteries. Mark my words - they’re going to be the new Amazon.com.

(Yet Another Sarcasm Alert: That previous blog was entirely sarcastic - well, at least the part about killing off sick people was - the rest of the post was pretty spot on. Anyhow, if you're going to be reading this blog your going to have to understand the word 'sarcastic'. Don’t know what “sarcastic” means? Blame your High School English Teacher and look it up – Funk&Wagnals makes a very nice dictionary, complete with pictures.)

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