Marketing Exploitation: You are so smart and strong
On May 1, US News and World Report included in their "health" section, an article called: How Consumers Can Force Health Reform
Smart patients, shopping wisely, are needed to bring health costs down
By Bernadine Healy M.D. (http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/2008/05/01/how-consumers-
can-force-health-reform.html).
Without ever reading the article, knowing it is written by a physician we can already note several things: 1) Physicians support health insurance because it ensures their pay 2) Physicians most commonly point their fingers at health insurance companies as the only problem and then quietly throw in that unhealthy consumers are also a difficulty 3) Physicians don't attack the unhealthy the way insurance companies do because the unhealthy pay their bills.
However, as consumers we're really bad at resisting the sales tactics that have enabled the business of health services from treatment to insurance to legislation because we fell into one of the oldest traps going: You're special so for you I'll make a deal said the flim flam man to the consumer.
I responded to the article cited above that you can read, but perhaps US NEWS and World Report won't consider my comments friendly enough to include..too bad. Below is my response:
Consumers are single-minded, they want access to affordable, quality, health services and how we get there is not helped by the myth of the go it alone, you are your own best advocate nonsense spewed and publicized by the most organized GROUPS in the country...health insurance companies, physicians, and the government. If going it alone, free competition, marketplace freedom is so good, is it just that consumers are REALLY bad shoppers? Are we really this Stupid that we would let the cost of health services grow in double digit numbers every year and the cost of health insurance products grow every year while coverage is reduced? Or maybe while consumers were going it alone, they failed to recognize the legislative and business changes that have made the organized groups of medical services providers, and health insurance companies, bigger and stronger than the consumer...the one who pays their bills.
While we're told to be grown ups and take personal responsibility for ourselves, the two largest lobbying firms for health insurance companies combined into the mega-lobbying group AHIP. While we're told to take care of ourselves physicians and the AMA have devoted their time, their money, and their lobbying power pushing for legislation supporting protection of their pay through health insured patients(visit their legislative advocacy page). And while we're being told to "man up" and take responsibility, our government pushed through reforms promoting MORE private insurance company power through laws that allow insurance companies to also be involved as financial institutions (see banking run by health insurers selling high deductible plans), less coverage through the unlimited ability to raise co-pays and legislation that is paving the way so that by next year instead of fixing the business of gouging consumers for health services, long term care policies, that newest buzzword creature of insurance companies and health services providers protecting their own pay will be sold to new groups of "empowered" consumers.
These actions which combined with the fact that there is NO CAP on the cost of health services, that there is NO CAP on the cost of health insurance, that there is NO PROTECTION FOR CONSUMERS FOR RENEWAL OF HEALTH INSURANCE AFTER A DIAGNOSIS, show that the biggest mistake consumers made was to buy into the idea that a single gung ho anti-government survivalist type could "bargain" and "responsibility" his way into a better deal with his insurance company than his aging, sick co-citizen. It is time for us to be grown ups and take responsibility for the fact that putting our hands over our eyes and saying "I don't see you" to the big ORGANIZED GROUPS OF ADVOCATES for health services providers and health insurance companies who advise us to go it alone is not because they want to reward you healthy young types, it's because they know that you, at least until the day of your first symptom of high cholesterol, are what is known as a CASH COW, a payer for preventive services covered by insurance that charges you a monthly premium for that "covered" check up. If you're healthy there is no such thing as bad health insurance nor is there such thing as bad medical care because you don't need either. But all the frightened consumers who think that going it alone has made them more powerful need a reality check, it is only as groups that individuals have the power to deal with big government and big business.
You've been flattered into a corner my empowered friend of personal responsibility because even if you do everything you're told, you are today older than yesterday, you will be told in the near future that you need some medical care and YOU will become an unpleasant risk for health insurance companies that don't want to actually cover expenses for needed medical treatment when they can sell so many policies of empty promises and exceptions at affordable rates to those who will never ask them to actually insure anything. You think they call you smart because they recognize your inner brilliance? Do you really think that all the years of good health will protect you from living the American dream of price-gouging health services covered at lower and lower rates when you get sick?
And when the sales tactics of calling you smart you non services using premium paying genius and you still dare to get sick? Then you are a drain. Then you are a high risk pooler, and then, too late you'll realize that maybe you weren't so smart after all.
Until consumers STOP turning on one another for being old, for being sick, for being human, WE have empowered the government and big business to maintain and perpetuate and exploit us...and all on OUR DIME.
