Healthcare Hullabaloo: Bizarro #6

Your Mama's yappin' in the back seat
Tell her to push over and move them big feet
Every Monday morning I gotta drive her down to the unemployment agency
Well this morning I ain't fighting tell her I give up
Tell her she wins if she'll just shut up
But it's the last time that she's gonna be riding with me

---Bruce Springsteen - "Sherry Darling"

EEEAAAHHH! What is worse than a back seat driver? How about a back seat driver that doesn’t know how to drive?

MYOB – or mind your own business – is a concept that most of us have been familiar with since an early age. AKA ‘don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong’, it’s a fundamental part of polite society – and generally accepted good business practice.

As a hypothetical example, imagine planning a family vacation to Disney World. With cash being tight, you decide that you will have to save money somewhere in order to pay for those $6.00 frozen lemonades and for those pancake breakfasts with teenagers sweating profusely in heavy costumes that they can’t see out of.

So, instead of forking over $1,500 to Continental (and running the risk of your four year old being subjected to a full cavity search), you decide to pack up the family truckster and drive down to God’s waiting room.

You call the Auto Club and get a trip itinerary, detailing the best route to Orlando. However, the night before your departure, you get a call from your Auto Insurance Company. It seems that they have gotten wind of your trip itinerary, and didn’t like the fact that you were planning to take Route 95 all the way there. It seems that there is a slightly higher statistical risk of getting in a fender bender on the interstate. In the name of saving money, they are demanding that you drive down to Florida on Route 1 instead. Sure it’s going to take twice as long in a car filled with bored and vocal children, but they insist that everybody has to do their part in keeping Auto Insurance affordable.

But it doesn’t stop there.

They also start dictating where you’re going to stop on your road trip.

So you were thinking of visiting Pedro at South of the Border and picking up some sparklers for next year’s Fourth of July? Not so fast – they want you to stop at Big Jimbos’ Discount Fireworks and Roadside Museum – home of the world’s largest gallstone.

You were planning a stop at Stuckey’s to pick up a nice nut log for Grandma? Nope – they want you to buy her some hard candies at 76 truck stop.

Your kids are hungry and want McDonalds for lunch? Sorry, your auto insurance company insists you dine at Bojangles instead. They’ve even picked out the menu for you (you say that you don’t like fried chicken? Too bad. What size pop you want with that? You want that tea sweet or unsweet?)

Of course, this is a ridiculous scenario. No one would tolerate this behavior from their car insurance company. After all – they are just an insurance company – how dare they try to tell you how to run your life? Or to ruin your family vacation?

However, this is exactly the type of rude behavior that we put up with in the world of health care. In fact, we’ve grown to accept it as being normal, acceptable behavior.

And the situation keeps on getting worse.

As years pass, the health insurance companies are getting more and more aggressive in their influence on your medical care. From what drugs you can take, what tests you can have, and how frequently you can see your doctor, the health insurance carriers are making more and more decisions on your life and health.

This ingress does not stop at the doctor’s office. I recently heard a radio spot by Horizon Blue Cross on their new program where they are ‘working with’ hospitals to help them reduce the number of infections. While this sounds altruistic at first, you can come to ask “who the hell are they to ‘help’ run a medical facility? They are not doctors, nurses, or other health care professionals. They are not medically or ethically liable or accountable for patient’s health. They are, at best, an insurance company. In actuality, they are an unwelcome middle man who is sucking up 20 – 40% of your health care dollar. They are a bunch of bean counters who have interjected themselves into the health care system.

Of course, they will try to defend themselves by saying that they are ‘doing their part’ to keep health care affordable. Hey Horizon – do you REALLY want to help make health care affordable? Stop trying to micromanage it. Act like a real insurance company and cover catastrophic loss instead of dipping your beak into every transaction.

Americans should be up in arms about these giant leeches that are sucking the life blood out of our health care system. But, sadly, we’re passively letting them continue with this outrageous behavior. We’ve been thoroughly brainwashed to accept this mistreatment from our health insurance carriers when we would never remotely tolerate it from the other insurance companies that we do business with. If our auto, homeowners, or life insurance companies acted like out health care insurance companies did, there would be riots in the streets. Somehow, health insurance companies keep on geting a pass from America for their unethical profiteering.

Bizarro.

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