Health Insurance Comments

This was inspired by recent protests organized by MoveOn.org, in which people marched in front of Wellpoint and demanded that they change certain things about how they do business.

Health insurance is a financial industry - their role is to handle large sums of money and to turn a profit doing it. To do so leads to an ever-increasing demand for efficiency. Unfortunately this is by necessity impersonal - decisions about who to carry are made for financial reasons.

Can we force this industry to take a different approach? To do so will mean a reduction in its profitability, which will result in fewer investors. Since such a directive would be contrary to the business's stated goals I can imagine that the industry would become much weaker.

Currently insurance companies are under pressure at all times to be more efficient and effective from a financial point of view. In some case this leads to better service for customers, but in others it leads to people being denied coverage. I am not sure what the answer is, but I suspect that trying to force the industry to go against its basic role and become more humane would not yield the desired result. Instead we need a stronger system to handle those whose health is such that they won't fit into the insurance companies' mold. If such scheme were built (the "public" option) then I am sure that insurance companies would adapt and survive. But to demand that they change their stated business plan is not going to get anywhere that we want to be.