Some commercial insurers are exiting the insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, complaining they can’t make enough money on them, But they had better watch out, writes Caroline Poplin, M.D., in MedPage Today. Their exit may make a lot more people wonder why we need commercial insurers {and their vast cost to the public} at all. She writes at the end of her piece:
“Commercial insurance works by charging individuals enough to cover their risk (with something left over for profit). High-risk people often cannot buy insurance at all. No one sells ordinary flood insurance to homeowners in a flood plain. We have Medicare for elderly and disabled people because they couldn’t get private health insurance. Insurers want to keep their healthy customers, and let someone else — high-risk pools, charity, the government — take care of anyone who gets sick.
“But remember this: health insurance is not healthcare. Insurers are simply middlemen: if they disappeared — or were paid simply to track claims — and replaced by a Medicare-for-all system, everyone could still access healthcare. It is not clear that the value added by the industry is worth the cost, estimated at $350 billion {a year}. Spending that money directly on healthcare could improve our health, and eliminating public subsides to private insurers would reduce the deficit.
“Insurers who are dissatisfied with the ACA: Be careful what you wish for.”
To read her entire essay, please hit this link.
