The health insurance industry still has nonprofit health insurers. Does nonprofit mean that employees of such companies receive less pay? Depends on the industry and the health insurance industry is NOT hurting. So where does the "profit" money go from nonprofits? They spend it...new furniture, salaries, you name it, as long as they comply with the "nonprofit" accounting requirements. The upside of nonprofits for consumers is that they are subject to additional government oversights. But the formulas are only as ethical as the players.
Corrupt health insurers (corrupt meaning misleading insureds into thinking that it is individual poor health rather than the mega dollars of corporate wasteful spending on themselves that has caused our "crisis") and corrupt governments (that have expanded employment of people working for government and WITH insurers instead of for consumers and those who elect them) keep squeezing the consumer.
Unfortunately, consumers, scared for themselves, are only too willing to point the finger at their neighbors as the "reason" that health insurance is unaffordable instead of paying attention to the millions and billions of dollars being spent on supporting the corrupt and greed-motivated employees of health insurers and government.
So who is William Jews? The next time you worry and point the finger at the sick and argue against insurance coverage for the smoking, fat, aging, chronically ill citizen next to you because you worry for your own health insurance coverage, think about William Jews. William Jews just lost his job last year. His severance package has been under review for a year, and the verdict is in. Your government representatives have decided that as a nonprofit employee, his departing pay should be halved. Phew...our system is working, right?
William Jews is the ex CEO of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield. CareFirst is one of the BlueCross Blue Shield industries that is not part of Wellpoint's FOR profit organization of Blue Cross Blue Shield companies. CareFirst is a nonprofit.
William L. Jews, former CEO wanted the company to be sold to Wellpoint, but the sale did not go through and the CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield remained a non profit. This was one of the "failures" that led up to his resignation. Maryland's government fought the transition because after all, the mission is to help people for a nonprofit, right? It's just a matter of whom is being helped. For the people in the Maryland area, Jews did succeed in consolidating many health insurers in the Maryland area...in other words, he succeeded in reducing CHOICE by buying up competitors. THAT doesn't sound like the consumer choice all the free market liars are talking about. The other part is that nonprofit somehow means that some social good is pursued by a company...just look at Jews' departing pay which yesterday was reported as halved to a mere $9 million.
While government oversight of nonprofits led to the drastic reduction in money which Mr. Jews walked away with, it's hard to not see the irony in the $9 million paid to this nonprofit worker. You can read about the CEO in Thomas Heath's article in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/14/AR2008071402000.html
It's hard for anyone paying for health insurance to feel bad for the employees of health insurance companies whether for or non-profit. The extra scrutiny of non-profits by governments also seems little more than meaningless.
The take away of the article for me is that consumers should at least know how silly it sounds to regurgitate words like consumer choice when it comes to medical insurance. There are a few big players, they have a few types of products, and dazzle consumers into the feeling of choice by taking the basic premium, deductible, co-pay package of expenses and matching it up with the basic participating provider, medication list, and coverages for preventive services to offer consumers.
In order to forever increase their money flow from consumers, consumers are told that WE can impact the cost of health insurance by being ...you know, healthy. In addition to the ridiculous reasoning that reminds consumers that only by being healthy are they living up to their obligations as citizens so that if they are sick they should expect to pay more, this successful marketing has distracted consumers from the real money flowing through the health services industry.
We want to think of nonprofits as some socially responsible concept the same way we want to think of insurance products as presenting lots of "choice."
Unfortunately, such thinking is injurious to ourselves. Some of the highest salaried individuals work for non-profits, like Mr. Jews. It is the industry that must be examined and the health insurance industry is spreading its money out to people other than the insureds. So when we, the insureds get squeezed by health insurers who claim that insureds are draining the system by actually using medical services and expecting companies that took our premiums to live up to their end of the bargain and help pay for these services, when we hear that sick people can't be covered because insurance companies won't be able to survive, when we hear about the health care crisis that comes from the smoking, fat, high cholesterol individuals whose premiums insurance companies have taken for years and years, I want us all to think of Mr. Jews and those of his ilk, those insurance workers who have taken millions in salary and more millions when they depart from health insurance companies.
