People Strategies: health insurance companies hurting American society

Linda Bower is a speaker, executive coach and human performance improvement consultant in Rogersville.

About six years ago, I took a stance not to consult with health insurance companies. From a business perspective, I don't believe in how they operate. At that point, nothing had happened to me personally to cause such a decision to be made. It was simply a philosophical choice.

Since then U.S. laws and policies have changed, I left the health protection of an employer and I lived for a year with socialized medicine in Canada. Now I not only refuse to support health insurance companies, I rail against them.

From a business perspective, I think health insurance companies have the wrong idea about their place in society. As a result, they are destroying the quality of life for everyone in America.

Look at a few of the decisions the health insurance industry forces us to make:

Our hospital stays, medications, frequency of visits and the extent of our care are all governed by the statistics of a profit-driven industry.

Our doctors are restricted in the care they give if it is outside policy.

Our caregivers now openly discriminate between the insured and the uninsured. (Some providers in town no longer accept uninsured patients.)

Our caregivers don't have a clue how much medical care really costs, so the uninsured pay as if they had the resources of an insurance provider.

This was quite a shock coming from Canada. When I moved to Toronto, I went to a government office, they took a picture of me and gave me a health card. Anytime I needed prescriptions, medical, dental or vision care, I went to the doctor and gave him or her my card. That was it.

In Canada, basic health care was available to everyone. Employers and individuals could choose to augment their coverage. Doctors were just as good and caring and far less stressed. Even the paperwork seemed to be gone.

Like any system, Canada's is imperfect. But nobody I knew had terrible stories of getting the care they needed in a timely manner. By contrast, I frequently hear general dissatisfaction with the health care system from my British clients. It's clear that all socialized health care systems are not equal.

My main problem with the health care industry here is that it is for-profit. It causes people and businesses to make socially irresponsible decisions for the purpose of making money.

For example, many doctors in our community have minimum quotas for the number of patients they treat. I don't know about you, but when my family, friends or I need help, the last thing I want someone to think about is making money. Especially when the providers are in a position of taking advantage of people under stress.

Have you ever tried to get a quote for medical care before you received it? I was with an "uninsurable" friend when he was checking in for outpatient surgery. The hospital couldn't tell him how much it would cost ahead of time and said that all charges could be put on his credit card. My friend was shocked at receiving bills in the neighborhood of $7,000 and then found out most of it had to be paid within 30 days.

Like many others, I was under the impression that people who don't have health insurance just couldn't afford it. However, in this country, if you have varicose veins, you are now uninsurable without an employer to cover your health insurance.

The same is true if you have a history of depression, or any number of other common illnesses.

Health insurance companies have calculated that people with varicose veins or depression, for example, are more likely to need medical care, and are therefore too expensive to cover.

I used to think that those without health insurance just couldn't afford it. That is until I became self-employed and uninsurable. It seems my only choice is to buy catastrophic insurance and have thousands of dollars on hand in case anything happens to me.

Could it be that I fit into a tiny little minority of people with special circumstances? Or is this a community issue?