Professional Insurance Blog

There is a lot of talk on the campaign trail about ‘Universal’ and ‘Mandatory’ Health Insurance/Care and making it affordable for all. There is also a lot of talk about the cost of care and what can be done to contain fees/costs. Most of the solutions presented center around reducing over-utilization of tests and procedures, monitoring providers and review boards. What nonsense!

We need to increase awareness about what is really driving health care costs up: The obscene salaries of insurance, medical equipment and pharmaceutical company executives plus their bonuses, and, the insane commissions their brokers/salespeople get to sell their policies/products plus their perks, like all expense-paid trips to Europe and Asia.

The ideas currently being put forth by industry representatives and legislators as ways to contain health care costs are nothing more than smoke-n-mirrors.

Obviously, with corporate America virtually running this country when it comes to consumer policy, this is all that will happen, until organizations like Health Care For All and other advocacy organizations begin to collectively and seriously turn up the heat concerning getting health care and insurance costs under control and affordable to everyone.

I am so passionate about this subject that I am drawing up “proposals”, if you will, to submit to the state legislature in Massachusetts, just as I did back in 2000 concerning “Mandatory Minimum Merit-Rated Health Insurance”. Which the legislators took, in part, and ran with. Those proposals include the following:

1. For all health, liability and medical liability (malpractice) insurance companies “doing business in” a state - either selling or based there - add a 2% “state surtax” onto all company executives salaried over $70,000 and all brokers earning over $70,000 in commissions, and, onto all bonuses and trips awarded to executives and brokers. The monies from this surtax to be put into a fund for the “universal” plan and/or into a fund to assist working middle class people in purchasing insurance who would not otherwise qualify for the “universal” plan and could not afford another option.

2. Require all such companies based in a state to pay an additional 2% “corporate state surtax”. The funds from which are to be utilized as above.

3. All health/medical equipment and pharmaceutical corporations that are “doing business in”- either selling or based there - a state, can be surtaxed in the same manner as #1 & #2.

Now, the fact is some will claim that adding/increasing taxes will result in these corporations increasing their fees and costs. But if legislators pass bills to impose “caps” on what consumers have to pay for services and equipment - just like health insurers do with health care claims - then we will begin to see costs level off and stabilize.

The fact is, it is NOT the hospitals or the providers who willingly drive up costs and fees. If they have to pay more for equipment and insurances, they have to raise fees. The bottom line for skyrocketing costs and fees falls on the insurance, equipment and pharmaceutical companies. And everyone knows it.
Dr. David Robinson received his B.S. in biology at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts and his D.C. from Life University, College of Chiropractic in Marietta GA. He then returned to the South Coast of Massachusetts to establish private practice. In 1996, he received his fitness certifications as a Personal Trainer, Fitness Counselor and Aerobic Instructor from the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America, Los Angeles CA.

Dr. Robinson’s full bio can be viewed on his website, www.Fat2Trim.com