Health insurance must die.

I can’t raise my rates 40% in a year. Yet, I’ve had incredible, wild swings from year to year for health insurance for my small business.. Reading this article about a former Cigna exec’s testimony to Congress makes it real clear why.

It’s worth a read of the full piece:

Wendell Potter says he is finished defending the insurance industry, which he says is “beholden to Wall Street.”

Wendell Potter once was a vice president in the public relations department for insurance giant Cigna.

At a hearing last week before the Senate Commerce Committee, the former vice president of corporate communications at the insurance giant Cigna testified, “I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry.”

via Ex-executive accuses insurance giant of ‘purging’ customers – CNN.com.

As an ad guy, I can also tell you that the people who have the most to lose in health care reform are the people who don’t actually provide any health care at all: the “Health Insurance Industry.”

Revenue for Cigna in 2008 was $19.1 billion. If all of that had gone to health-care providers instead of paper pushers who deny claims, we’d all be a lot healthier.

Fear of the unknown is a powerful tool- and the idea of NOT paying a middleman for “protection” from medical disaster is very foreign to Americans. At least, those of us who can still afford their care.

I don’t know of any doctor who took home over $100 million in a year, practicing medicine, but to insurance company CEOs- that’s all in a years pay.

To remind you, when you pay a CEO $124.8 million in a year, as United Health Group paid  William McGuire in 2005, that works out to $60,000 an hour. Now do you understand why insurance companies don’t want a single-payer health-care system?

I’d much rather pay for health care, than health insurance, wouldn’t you?

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