IF MASSACHUSETTS is the model, then national health care reform is ultimately doomed.
So begins Derrick Jackson in today's
Boston Globe, in
this op ed, titled as is this diary.
Why, might you ask? Blue Cross / Blue Shield of Massachusetts paid almost $28 million in retirement and severance pay to its last two CEOs, and they and other top medical insurerer paid tens of thousands to their board members even though nationally only 3 percent non-profits paid honoraria to their board members.
Remember - this is in Massachusetts.
This is under Romney-care.
Which is the model for what Republicans like to diss as "Obama-care."
Jackson follows with this:
Blue Cross board members are movers and shakers of commerce, labor, law enforcement, public health, medicine, diversity, charities, and the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, consumers are drowning in rising copays, premiums, and prescription costs.
If you read the piece you will see that what is happening in MA is far from unique. Jackson cites additional examples of excessive CEO pay in Michigan and North Carolina. He follows that with the excessive rate hikes by BC/BS plans in CA, NM, IL and MI. About the last he writes
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan wanted to jack up rates 56 percent on individual policies, but backed down in the face of outrage to hikes ranging between 7 percent and 9 percent.
Those increases, which might seem moderate in comparison to what was proposed, in fact still exceed the rate of inflation. And that is in a state where few people have seen increases in income.
Jackson reminds us that fully 1/3 of Americans are insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. Many, like me, are public employees.
Jackson also reminds us that a number of such plans are operated by Wellpoint, which continues to pay its executives excessive amounts:
But nowhere in the nation does it seem that Blue Cross is willing to moderate itself. WellPoint, which runs Blue Cross plans in 14 states, including California, raised compensation 51 percent in 2009 for CEO Angela Braly, to $13.1 million. Other top WellPoint executives received similar percentage hikes, taking home between $4.5 million and $7.2 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey gave recently retired CEO William Marino a 59 percent pay boost in 2009, to $8.7 million, and its top 10 executives received an average 61 percent raise, totaling $24.3 million.
There is pushback, as you can read in this highly recommended diary by nyceve Jackson tells us about the efforts of MA AG Martha Coakley to examine the most recent payouts to a former CEO, an $11.3 million golden parachute.
But it is not enough. After all, his predecessor had received more than $14 million.
These were for people effectively being let go. Because they did not do good enough jobs. One has to wonder, was that because they didn't raise premiums sufficiently, deny enough claims, gouge their customers enough?
Jackson follows the details about the two CEOs with one line:
If nonprofits can behave like this, there is no hope that costs will ever be reined in by a for-profit health care system.
To which one can only respond in one of two fashions
Yep
or
We told you so
Let us go back. Was this not almost inevitable when a single-payer option was taken off the table? What leverage was there against our current group of medical insurers, whether or not they are considered for-profit or non-profit?
And might we not learn something very important from this, that there are some things that are too important to be driven by the profit motive?
Oh wait, didn't we have wonderful illustrations in how badly for-profit entities like Halliburton did in supplying our armed forces in Iraq, down to given them showers that electrocuted?
We didn't learn then.
We haven't learned on health care.
It doesn't matter if something is "officially" non-profit if it compensates executives like a for-profit entity, if its operations are controlled as if it were for-profit, if it exempted from the rigorous oversight that should be applied to non-profits because its board members are movers and shakers.
Except I'm not talking about Blue Cross in that previous paragraph. I'm talking about charter schools.
Maybe it is time America finally learn that Gordon Gekko was wrong, greed is not good, and if we do not rein it in, we are all going to be worse off, far worse off, than we are now.
We have not learned from history. We have forgotten the depredations of the Gilded Age, the destruction of world economies caused by a previous generation of greed. We are dismantling the mechanisms that have kept it in control, and the social safety nets that are always necessary.
Jackson wrote If nonprofits can behave like this, there is no hope that costs will ever be reined in by a for-profit health care system. To which I add the obvious - if we cannot rein in our health-care costs, there is little hope for our economy.
I will be 65 in less than three months. I begin to wonder if I will have health care for the rest of my life. About that I wonder.
For the students I teach, there is no wonder. At our current rate, there will be no affordable health care for them.
But it may not matter.
The greedy want to remove protections for the environment because it limits their profits from petroleum and coal. They want to eliminate safety regulations because it limits their profits. They want to be able to move jobs to the lowest wage, least environmentally regulated and fewest worker protection countries they can to 'save on costs' when they really mean to maximize profits.
They are determined to destroy unions as the last remaining obstacle to totally dominating our legislating, our legal system, our economy, our nation.
At the current rate the young people I teach won't have to worry about health care. They won't have decent jobs, they won't be able to afford even the poor quality food that is still available. They will die younger than we do, among other things from water polluted by fracking, from air polluted by coal, from more severe weather the result of continuing to pump carbon into the atmosphere. No, health care won't matter.
UNLESS
- we recognize how connected this all is
- we push back on everything, not giving an inch
- we remember Peter Finch: We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore
- we organize
- we use what economic and political power we still have before we lose that.
Not how I planned to start my Saturday.
Is anyone out there?