At one point, I worked for a health insurer (actually, I’ve worked for several). The most obnoxious among them has a political action committee for its employees dedicated to “preserving choice” in the health care system.
But who’s choice? Certainly, not the individual’s choice, in the main. No, it is the choice of the large employers, mostly.
And then there is the retroactive disenrollment (recision for the uninitiated). That’s where they sell someone a policy, wait for them to get sick, then cancel the policy retroactively to its issuance and seek to get the money back. And yes, it is a programmatic effort.
Consumers claim that the applications are complex and misleading (they are). Insurers claim that the policy holders lie (some do). But this is a mess – and really goes to the heart of insurance “choice.” Now we know who has the choice – the people who sell the policy and then, two years later, try to claim a mulligan.
And privatization is good, right? I can’t wait for socialism to return!
