Psychological Warfare and Health Insurance

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/health/insurance/profiles/Jacqueline_Eyler.html is one of the participating consumers on a Washington Post site that allows consumers to rate their health care providers. After a horrendous story of illness, and health costs that are rising, the conclusion of this couple was the same as many of us, I'll keep my health plan because it's the best of a bunch of bad alternatives--they rated their Cigna PPO a B. I too have a Cigna PPO and I rate it an F. My health insurance plan does not supply affordable medical care that is quality and accessible...hmm...but now that I'm reading about it maybe we're all redefining those terms. Just like the morons who run around saying that 50 is the new 30, maybe B is the new F.

We have lowered our expectations to the point where if we have not YET died, if we have not YET gone bankrupt, if we have not YET been unable to find a timely appointment with a health service provider that we generously give our insurance companies a B. Lowered expectations may be good for relationships (though I don't think so since things are not static and lowered expectations usually lead to still lower performance which in turn leads to new lowered expectations).

Encouraging people to accept less is the kind of low self-esteem training that will make patients lay in their beds "trusting" what's going on around them, that will deplete morale to low-level depression that cannot fight for anything. As consumers become more passive, the other stakeholders fill the void and doctors lobby, sue and protect their entitlement to greater and greater incomes, insurers charge more and more for less and less, and Americans quietly PAY AND FADE into the oblivion of a perverse sort of battle fatigue.

Insurance companies collect money to cover the risk of illness. When advice columns on how to get them to live up to this job proliferate, they have failed. Doctors not getting paid is not because patients are scammers, it is a combination of too high cost and too little insurance coverage. All the politically correct spoon feeding of why we should lower our expectations is idiotic.