Sunday, February 20, 2011

Secrets of the health insurance industry

A former health insurance industry PR spokesperson, Wendell Potter, has written a book called 'Deadly Spin' - an inside view of the health insurance industry. It seems to be a book that should be required reading for anyone who believes the insurance industry isn't out for the bottom line. I will see about getting myself a copy...

I like his points:

- Don't read anything written by the marketing department at a health insurance company. I'm in marketing and I can tell you how anything can be spun anyway you want. Go use the government website www.healthcare.gov to figure out health insurance.

- All quoted rates will be for young healthy people. I can imagine what I would be quoted - two cancer diagnoses, chronic back issues, 8 surgeries to date, diabetes and rheumatoid in the family. They would just give me the $100,000/year premium and accept the fact that they will lose money on me.

- "Consumer driven" health insurance is a fancy term for 'let the consumers pay for it so the insurance companies don't have to'.

- Appeal every denied claim to the top of the food chain.

- And insurance companies have spent lots of money on influencing the people that matter - legislators, etc - to get things their way.

Maybe we should send off the insurance company executives who only care about their own bottom lines instead of the health of the American public for an extended vacation in some place far away so we can focus on keeping people health.

6 comments:

EMR said...

Sometimes health insurance hurts more than it helps.There are words in the contract that must be read carefully.Thanks for the tips.

adi said...

Great post

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I agree with that some health insurance companies are sometime do fraud with us, but not all. After all its good for us.

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I do agree that sometimes insurance companies do use tricky statements when advertising their policies to attract more and more people. People also do get attracted but when they came to know that things are totally different they are left with no option. So I would only suggest that one should be careful and gather all the info before opting any carrier.

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