There’s a fair amount of fear on display these days from some of the most powerful people and institutions on the planet. Trump's afraid of Nancy Pelosi. Billionaires at Davos are afraid of Ocasio-Cortez. Microsoft’s afraid of affordable housing and homeless advocates. And the health care status quo is afraid of losing its ability to charge whatever it wants for its products and services. If history is any indication, this high-powered group of scaredy-cats will ignore their opposers or attempt to appease them with small (in proportion to their total resources) gestures.

Just look at how they've responded so far.

Appease: Trump, unwilling to admit defeat to Nancy Pelosi, agrees to temporarily not get his way.

Ignore: Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies and billionaire attendee at Davos, says voluntary philanthropy is a better solution to inequality than taxing the uber rich. (Like that's worked so far.) He also falsely claimed that increasing rich peoples’ taxes hurts economic growth. Bottom line: Mr. Dell thinks that he knows better than the government how to “fix” inequality.

Appease (with a catch): Microsoft, responds to years’ of criticism for exacerbating the affordable housing crisis in the city of Seattle, by creating a multi-hundred-million-dollar housing loan program, along with a much smaller grant to address homelessness. This is a loans-to-pay-for-future-loans program in lieu of higher taxes; with a much smaller grant program thrown in to make it appear more generous. (Where does this I know how to address housing policy issues better than government attitude come from?)

Appease (latch onto): Health insurers and hospitals, in an attempt to forestall Medicare For All, are rolling out small-scale programs to address social determinants of health—‘the circumstances in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age’ that affects their health status and leads to health inequality. (Marmot, Sir Michael, The Health Gap (The Challenge Of An Unequal World): Bloomsbury Press, 2015). By making a small financial commitment now against health care inequality, which was never a major concern of theirs, health insurers and hospitals, hope the public will ignore their ever-increasing, opaque prices and poor health outcomes, on the part of hospitals and doctors. Continue Reading...

Tags: health inequality, Social determinants of health, health care , Medicare For All

If there’s a new year’s prediction that’s easy to make, it is that health insurance and health care prices will rise. The year 2017 was a hugely profitable one for large health insurers, and as predicted premium prices increased significantly in 2018. In 2018, health insurers again saw significant increases in quarterly profits and, you guessed it, monthly premiums increased in 2019. Annual health insurance premium increases are a trend with no end in sight because, why not. Medical care and pharmaceutical prices also rise each year in our anything goes health care system.

Meanwhile, people who have health insurance don’t want to use it because even with insurance, they may have to pay high medical bills when they receive care. Other people, especially in the individual health insurance market, are going without health insurance. After years of paying thousands of dollars each year in insurance premiums and deductibles, they have nothing else to give. Which makes me wonder: with all the frustration over ever-increasing health insurance and health care prices, will 2019 be the year the health care status quo loses its political and cultural support?

It’s On! (The Health Care Value Debate)

Maybe it's me trying to deal with the anger I feel about the 25% increase in health insurance premiums Cigna gifted me this year, but I’m starting to get a sense that 2019 won’t be business as usual for our greedy health insurance and health care industries. Or maybe it's a number of other signs I’m seeing in the health care reform policy debate:

• The new Democrat-led Congress elected to protect health care access, address health-insurance and health care costs, and explore universal health care options like Medicare-For-All or Buy-In, and Medicaid-For-All or Buy-
• The growing demand for real health care price data and all-payer claims databases by individuals and state governments, respectively
• The consistent reporting of and angry responses to outrageous medical care costs like the $629 Band-Aid, $4,000 surgical screw, and $52,000 per month prescription drug
• The study of health care value both nationally and internationally—what are we getting for the trillions we are spending, and what’s the real cost of innovation

Tags: health care , health insurance premiums