We Already Have "Death Panels": Private Insurance Companies

All this talk of "death panels" and "government bureaucrats" rationing health care would just be silly if it weren't for the fact that we already have bureaucrats rationing care in what could be called "death panels." Except for one thing: they're not government bureaucrats and "death panels," they're private insurance company bureaucrats and "death panels." Check out Salon's article, "The death panels' are already here" (subtitle: "Sorry, Sarah Palin -- rationing of care? Private companies are already doing it, with sometimes fatal results"):

The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they're ready to operate, but the bureaucracy -- or as Palin would put it, the "death panel" -- steps in and says it won't pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl's family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent -- but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.

It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.

This is just one terrible example, but sadly there are many, many more. In fact, it's my guess that you and/or your doctors have personally experienced some sort of battle with your HMO or other private health insurance companies over whether they will pay for prescribed tests, procedures, medications, etc. In fact, I'd even venture to say that it's almost impossible to receive health care in America today without at some point battling with private health insurance company bureaucrats over whether they will pay for tests, procedures, medications, etc. that your doctor has said you need. I've had this happen to me on multiple occasions, and I'm generally very healthy. I'd be shocked if it hasn't happened to most of you.

So here's the bottom line: today, in America, we've got a health care system in which private, for-profit health "care" companies attempt to make a profit by rationing care, essentially by trying as hard as they can not to pay for stuff if they can possibly avoid it. Under this warped system, the more people with "preexisting conditions" they can weed out, the better (for them, not for you of course). The more procedures and/or medications they can determine to be "not essential" and/or "not covered," the better (ditto). Basically, the more times they can say "sorry, no dice," the more profitable they are. Even if it means that you or someone you love ends up not getting that test and/or procedure they need, or goes into serious debt in order to get that test and/or procedure they need, or simply dies because you can't get the medical care you need - tough luck. That's the system we have now, under the all-knowing, all-caring private sector, yet I don't see the outrage at town hall meetings about this. Why not? And why this absurd assumption that health care reform which simply provides another option for people - a "public option" - to select instead of these outrageous private, profit-over-people health insurance companies is a bad thing?

By the way, since when, in America, is having more choices considered a bad thing? Only in the bizarro world of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Eric Cantor, and people of their ilk. Oh yeah, also in the cynical, amoral, even immoral "bizarro world" of the private health insurance companies, who profit more by providing you less. At least in the latter case, they have a motive to do what they do - money, and lots of it. But what about Eric Cantor et al? Oh yeah, I almost forgot, they receive huge sums of money from...yep, you guessed it, the private health insurance (and Big Pharma) industries. Hmmmm...do you think maybe people should be outraged about the current situation, with rationed care by profit-motive health insurance company bureaucrats and politicians in their pockets, instead of the crazy stuff Sarah Palin has conjured up about health care reform that attempts to address these dire problems? And hmmm...do you think maybe people should be outraged at the media for their generally slanted, shallow, "fair and balanced" coverage of this situation? And hmmmm...do you think maybe people should be angry at the Sarah Palins and Eric Cantors of the world for being wildly irresponsible demagogues on this issue (not to mention many other issues)? Hmmm....do you think these are the easiest questions you ever heard in your life or what?