What does the health insurance industry add to the equation?

[cmac2012]

Does the health insurance industry build hospitals, do they build universities, do they train doctors? The first is probably true to some extent but certainly not in all cases.

The spectre of HMO execs making 6 figure incomes based on their efficacy at denying claims is sorta grotesque.

Imagine some loose knit rural community whose members helped their neighbors out in times of trouble - now imagine that someone had the bright idea to set up a small fund to enable communication with each other about who needed help. Further imagine that the fund was expanded to provide travel expenses for them providing the aid.

How would members of this community and the fund react if they discovered that the people administering the fund were getting rich by keeping the funds rather than using the money to perform the services it was founded for?

That's not far from the setup we have now. The need for health care is so intimate and vital that people will jump through whatever hoops they can to get it. The HMO industry taps into this pressing need to get rich.

Bill Frist is worth some $400 million behind this as are his father and brother. Did they provide some $1 billion plus in value? You don't want health care rationed by some govt. bureaucrat? But a hundred milliionaire exec rations health care and that's fine and dandy??

HMO's most ardent defenders, aka Republicans, howl about how much money all of this will cost, as if the nation as a whole isn't already devoting massive funds and climbing to health care. Large administrative costs are currently required just to determine who is or is not entitled to care.

Pre-existing condition? Sorry, you may have been pre-existing in your life before you came under the umbrella or our insurance scam, I mean industry, but you're on your own pal. What? Did you think that by buying health care insurance that your health would be cared for? In some cases, maybe. Read the fine print, pal.