Michael Novotny's blog -- dateline Friday, Septemeber 25th, 2009
BISMARCK, N.D. -- Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota used premium payments to fund $15 million in employee bonuses, cover $35,000 for a retirement party and pay for other questionable expenses, according to a state audit released Tuesday. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/09/blue-cross-blue-shield-ex_n_281282.html
Are Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Officer Salaries Excessive? 05/19/08
In his second year as chief executive officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Daniel Loepp earned $1,657,555, a 67% raise over his $999,351 salary and compensation in 2006, the company's 2007 financial records show. Both figures are well above the national average for insurance CEOs.
Blue Cross also gave large retirement and buyout packages to seven of its top 10 executives in a year of higher-than-usual turnover at the company. Read more at http://blogpublic.lib.msu.edu/index.php/2008/05/19/are-blue-cross-blue-shield-of-michigan-o?blog=5
Want more? Just Google Blue Cross Blue Shield EO compensation.
MIchael Novotny's blog -- dateline Wednesday, August 26th 2009
SOME PERSONAL THOUGHTS ON THE HEALTHCARE DEBATE
As a small business, the current debate on health care costs is one that is near and dear to our hearts at Arrowpoint Realty, so these are the perspectives of a small employer providing coverage to employees.
Part 1. During the 1990s when Bill Clinton was President, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton recognized the healthcare crisis which was looming and wanted to make some sort of reform her personal project. If you remember, she was derided and criticized without mercy.
An acquaintance of mine commented that it was not the government’s job to provide healthcare, and that people who didn’t have adequate or any coverage at all were either irresponsible or just didn’t want to spend the money, and it was their own fault if they got ill without insurance. At that time, her and her husband were covered by very good medical insurance through his workplace, totally paid for by his employer.
Fast forward about 10 - 15 years later and her husband is retired and covered by Medicare, but she is still under 65 and has to secure private insurance. Because of her age, that coverage was extremely expensive, and I remember her commenting to me that the cost was, in her words, “outrageous!” She wanted to know why the government didn’t do something? I reminded her of her words from over a decade earlier.
Part 2. A member of my family just had a heart attack about 3 weeks ago. Fortunately, he was out of the hospital with a stint in his heart and back on the golf course in a very short time, and he is fine now. His bill would have been $75,000 -- pricey enough to cause a bankruptcy if it hadn’t been for the excellent insurance he has as a retired state employee.
What is interesting to note is that the high premiums we pay for medical insurance are usually justified by insurance carriers based on the cost of the procedures and treatments they underwrite, and this $75,000 bill might be a case in point. Except that Blue Cross/Blue Shield didn’t actually pay $75,000. They only paid $25,000, and because of their heft as big insurance company, the hospital accepted 33 cents on the dollar as payment in full. The question is, who picks up the other $50,000?
I suppose we all do in terms of those same high costs hospitals charge, like the proverbial $10 aspirin tablets. What if this person had not been insured? This family, like so many in America without insurance, would have been on the hook for the entire $75,000. The family probably would have had to file bankruptcy, had their home foreclosed, and gone on public assistance.
And who pays for foreclosures? – Other home owners in terms of reduced home values. Who pays for the public assistance? –We all do, with our taxes. I doubt if the hospital would have accepted from this family the 33 cents on the dollar that it was forced to accept from Blue Cross.
Part 3. John McCain is one of the two senators from Arizona. I watched all of the Presidential Debates last year and I was always fascinated when Senator McCain said “Americans don’t want the government involved in their health care.” I always wanted to ask the Senator who provided his health care coverage? Of course, wouldn’t that be “The Government!”
Frankly, I feel more comfortable having the government between me and my doctor than a giant for-profit insurance company which increases their profits by denying me certain treatments that they decide are “experimental” or unnecessary.
I look at Medicare and see a program that benefits so many senior citizens, although at the time of its inception, conservatives were using the same catch phrases about “socialized medicine.” Also, the government sends out millions of social security checks every year with scarcely a glitch. Without this program, millions of our elderly would be on the streets or eating canned dog food.
The fact that Social Security is going broke isn’t about problems with the program, it is actually pretty efficiently operated, with only a small portion of its annual expenditure going to administrative costs. The problems facing social security result from congress failing to budget for the huge baby boom bubble beginning now to enter the system.
Part 4. I was amazed to learn that 50% of all bankruptcies in the United States are caused by huge medical bills. At Arrowpoint Realty we see this every day when we run credit reports on new tenant applications for rentals. What is equally amazing, and not as well known, is that ½ of all those bankruptcies are people who had medical insurance, but learned the hard way that there were all sorts of exclusions to their coverage. There are tons of anecdotal evidence about how various individuals were denied treatment by their medical insurance, sometimes even to face death, because they just assumed they would be covered.
Part 5. Everyone in America has a right to an opinion on this subject. We need to have a lot of different perspectives to come up with solutions – good solutions about how we provide coverage to the at least 40 million uninsured Americans, and the many more under-insured ones, such as folks with pre-existing conditions.
But it is a tragedy when people who are intent on simply winning an argument, are willing to resort to misinformation, hyperbole, and outright lies, just to influence public opinion. When I hear our recent Vice Presidential candidate, Sara Palin, insisting that health care reform will create government-run death panels to decide who will get treatment and who won’t, even after she has been corrected on this mis-information countless times, I have to wonder where this person’s sense of right and wrong really rests?
In fact, for years, we have had politicians from both the Republican and Democratic parties, conservative and liberal, who have supported end-of-life counseling by qualified physicians as being the right thing. To misconstrue this as some sort of government death panel is a sad commentary on the character of someone who has chosen to misuse their popular public voice in this urgent national discussion.
Part 6. According to what I’ve been reading and hearing, health insurance today costs the average family about $14,000 per year, over $1000 per month. And the projection is that within the next decade, that cost will double to $28,000 per year, which is just not sustainable.
As Americans, we like to think we are number one in everything, that we always have or are the best – but when it comes to healthcare, that just isn’t the case. Even though our spending for healtcare as individuals and as a nation ranks at the top of the list of countries, our ranking in terms of infant mortality is worse than that of some third world nations. Globally, we rank about 38th in terms of providing health care for all of our citizens.
Part 7. The increasing cost of health care and the cost of health care coverage is perhaps the largest threat there is to our national security because it threatens our very economic fiber. As fewer citizens can get quality coverage or treatments, there will be a growing separation between the insured and uninsured, those who are treated and those who are abandoned. This could prove to be a much bigger rift than that caused by differences of race or religion, or even the traditional societal segments of the haves and haves-not.
Part 8. The previous President, George Bush II, once remarked that there was no healthcare problem in America – anyone could get treatment just by going to the emergency room, where they must by law treat you. This is not true and it is certainly not what we should expect from our elected leadership in solving the largest problem facing this nation. We can only hope that the current administration hangs tough against organized protests and disruptions which I believe are sponsored by drug and insurance companies.
Sadly, many of the people who are most opposed to reform are those who could most benefit, because they have been filled with misinformation by conservative pundits and AM radio talk-show hosts.
Part 9. Personally, I am all for getting the insurance companies out from between my doctor and me. They do not have my best interests or my health at heart, they are looking to cut costs and make money. What is their principal cost? Claims, of course. The less they pay out in claims, the more profit they make. When it comes to your health or your very life, how could that sound like a good idea to anyone?
Part 10. We must retain the single-payer option in any revamp of our healthcare system. I believe that eliminating the insurance companies and their enormous profits, would go a long way towards providing universal health care coverage.
And contrary to what people such as Rush Limbaugh say, this would not be “socialized medicine.” You could still have the same choice of Doctors you have today. It is just that the government would replace the insurance companies – and after all, who is the government? It is US.
Michael Novotny
|
|
