Why We Need A National Plan: Blue Cross Rewards Employees Who Drop Sick Policy Holders

The LA Times reports that Blue Cross of California praised employees who found ways drop sick policy holders and revoke their coverage.

Blue Cross of California encouraged employees through performance evaluations to cancel the health insurance policies of individuals with expensive illnesses, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) charged at the start of a congressional hearing today on the controversial practice known as rescission.

Stupak’s charge is really at the crux of the whole health care debate in this country.  Fundamentally, the private insurance companies find themselves in somewhat of a bind and they are institutionally incapable of getting out of it.  As a result, they’re pulling the rest of the country down with them.

The purpose of a corporation is to make money.  Insurance companies make money by taking in more money in premiums than they pay out in benefits, in essence making a bet that their policy holders won’t get sick.

As a society, however, we demand that health care serve to keep us healthy and prolong our lives.  This costs money and thus it is something that health insurance companies – as part of the health care system – are institutionally predisposed to avoid.

And herein lies the problem.  The reason that the entire First World has gone over to a socialized healthcare system is that the goals of corporate healthcare are in fundamental conflict with the priorities of the society it serves.  In short, the purpose of a health care system is not to make money but to make sick people well.

Ask a Blue Cross stock holder and he or she will almost certainly tell you that the company was doing its job in dropping those policy holders.  Ask a Californian, however, and they’re likely to disagree.