No one likes insurance companies – trying to get them to pay a claim is like wrenching a bone out of a dog’s clenched teeth – and now we have another reason to hold them in low regard. The biggest advocate for blowing another $1 trillion hole in the federal budget is the health insurance lobby.
The giant insurance companies – including UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Humana are leading what Capitol Hill sources describe as “an unprecedented lobbying blitz to restore hundreds of billions in taxpayer-funded Obamacare and Medicare Advantage subsidies.”
Brian Blase, a longtime health care expert who worked in the Trump White House, calculates that most of the reimbursement money wouldn’t financially benefit patients. The premium subsidies would mostly go straight into the bank accounts of the mega insurers.
The dirty little secret of the health care system, since Obamacare was enacted back in 2010, is that the big jackpot winner has been the insurance industry. Their stock has risen roughly four times faster than average for the stock indexes.
By some estimates, this budgetary money grab is worth $30 billion to $50 billion to the insurance lobby.
This raises the question of whether most health insurance spending is really needed at all. If every American simply had a catastrophic coverage plan that would avoid families going bankrupt due to cancer or a terrible accident, we could simply pay our routine health bills the way we pay for rent or groceries – and then cut out the insurance middleman.
Patients would shop around for the lowest prices, and health insurance would be like home fire insurance: there to aid families in an emergency.
Instead, the insurance companies are adding hundreds of billions of extraneous profits out of the health care system because Americans are over-insured.
Ironically, when Obamacare was originally hatched back in 2010, opponents, including many of your loyal Unleash Prosperity editors, warned that the endgame was a single-payer government-run system that would eliminate the private insurance industry middleman. That’s exactly the outcome the $3 trillion health care system is barreling toward.
But sooner rather than later, the Bernie Sanders Democrats are going to make their case that the vulturous insurance lobby is an unnecessary trillion-dollar expense to the health care chain.
If Democrats and Republicans can agree on anything, it’s that all Americans would be richer and healthier without this health insurance scam.
Stephen Moore is a former Trump senior economic adviser and the cofounder of Unleash Prosperity, which advocates for education freedom for all children.
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The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
I am a retired Human Resources professional who negotiated insurance premiums for employees. The premium rate increases were usually around 5%. I could live with that.
But now retired and on Medicare with the Supplemental insurance (Medigap) raising my and my husband’s premium rates for 2026 by 25%!!! That out of control! And we are healthy without any major health issues.
Maybe AMAC can investigate this and bring it to the attention of the Dr. Oz, CMS Administrator.
I agree, we don’t need to continue feeding these big insurance co. I’m hoping all Americans will feel the same way.
Well, for the elected officials who are standing and holding up the government budget by forcing a shutdown because of the demand to continue with these subsidies, this means that they are being paid, under the table, quite well to continue their useless rhetoric of denying people healthcare access while covering up the real facts about where the money is actually going. I have no sympathy for increasing profits for the insurers, while trying to convince them to cover my healthcare costs.
So what’s being DONE about it other than just hot air !!
Here’s the deal. I was on Obama are prior to medicare. My premiums were reduced to what the policy should cost. But the retail cost that was changed to the subsidy was ridiculous. I was playing $350 per month and the subsidy paid the additional $1000. The prices are so inflated for free government money.
I agree, but how do you stop a run away, multi-ton train?
Health insurance companies have become so complex and all want their piece of the pie. Most of the time even there customer service depts. don’t understand their own programs because there are so many companies involved with different rules. Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) like Express scripts or CVS, companies like McKesson who handle prior authorizations IT, all the companies that provide IT programs to all the players, and customer service survey companies like Press Ganey and all the insurance “peer reviewers” that decide if a treatment is acceptable for your rare diagnosis (they may not even be in familiar with the terms of your diagnosis or procedure or be board certified in the specialty.). Almost forgot – the coding agencies who make and train people on the new diagnosis and billing codes every year. (There are probably many more that I’m forgetting). IT companies that provide EHRs to providers, IT companies that provide middleware for all the different departmental hardware – lab, radiology, etc. to link up to EHR. They are not interchangeable, and you pay big bucks to do updates and education every year. Once a EHR company. is picked, it is very expensive to change and in some cases nearly impossible. We pay for all of this and it was instituted to stop fraud, waste and abuse. What a joke! What’s really sad is that the real providers of care only get a pittance and all the middlemen get more. A lot of small community care providers will close. In many places there are more staff working in admin, billing, customer satisfaction, etc. than doing actual patient care. And those that do direct patient care are forced to do input into screens that actually look at a patient. I have original Medicare plus two other insurances, but Medicare rate of reimbursement is primary and controls what the others can pay. I am in Alaska, reimbursement rates for providers on my bills can range from 7-20% of actual charges. No provider can stay in business for long at those rates. A single payer system like Medicare will create a lot more rigid rules bureaucracy and force providers to accept even less. Alot of health care workers will leave the profession. Providers are already forced into corporate practices now, very few can remain in their own private practice. I worked in health care for over 40 years and remember when charting was handwritten or dictated and bills were given at time of service. I’ve worked at places big and small where compassion and charity were practiced. It may have been inefficient at times, but I think it was more honest.
if it keeps going this way, unchecked, unbridled we will soon be paying $1,000 a month. Stop the highway robbery
Screw them the greedy B#^&*$^%
I agree with the ideas of requiring everyone to have a catastrophic plan and let them buy up if they want more coverage. With today’s computing ability it would not be hard to have a smorgasbord of benefit add-ons like Rx, PCP visits, Imaging, etc. This will let a family choose and pay for the coverage they want and can afford. I would further have pop-ups that tell a person what the risks are if for example they do not choose to have a full Rx benefit or rehabilitation coverage, etc.
What an excellent article. I shared on social media. Everyone has to know this. I am a casualty of Obamacare, because when he started his ‘you have to do more with less’ spiel, the pressure management (which had nothing to lose) put on us healthcare workers, was too much for my post chemo 61 yr. old body, so I quit, and had to pay health insurance with my savings. COBRA is just as bad. Never get over how people keep voting Democrat. Masochism, ignorance, ideology? Go figure.
The phrase “The Insurance Racket” certainly rings true. Only auto insurance ever seems willing to pay anything when needed. No other insurance should ever be mandated because they so often get out of doing their job!
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Universal Health Care is the answer. We look stupid to other countries that have it. Imagine the financial strain lifted off of so many people.