The article is from : http://Healthcare.change.org
I feel like I’m pretty inured to the worst stories of an insurance industry that consistently denies claim for necessary care. All the same, I wasn’t ready for today’s article by the L.A. Times and ProPublica entitled “Injured war zone contractors fight to get care.” Simply put, we have allowed an insurance company to make tremendous profits in part by denying care for serious injuries and mental health problems acquired by civilian contractors working in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. We allow this at the same time that so many pundits are pushing back on the need for regulation of the health insurance industry by telling us how efficient private insurance is.
Road Side Bombs Injured Civilian Americans
Denying care to those who obtained injuries in a war zone because they’re civilians, not soldiers, isn’t efficient. It’s inhumane.
In many ways, this story feels like so many American missteps combining into an almost unspeakable shame. The war is Iraq, with all of its baggage. The victims are civilian employees, in harm’s way while working as truck drivers, translators and, yes, privately hired bodyguards, necessary both because of the nation-building required in the country and our willingness to outsource security rather than provide adequate troops from the get-go. The injuries in question are severe disabilities and PTSD in the wake of IEDs and other methods of insurgency with which we’ve become all-too-familiar. The problems with private insurance denying claims and necessary care, forcing patients and victims to pay out of pocket while simultaneously making unseemly profits readers of this blog know all too well. And it’s only perfect that the insurance company in question… is AIG.
No one expects Iraq to be a friendly place to work, but over 200,000 civilian contractors sign up to make a lot of money quickly, as compensation for performing in hazardous conditions is better than what they can get at home. These people need to be insured by their employer, obviously. Thanks to the Defense Base Act, the money for medical care, disability and a death benefit isn’t even paid for by the contracting company – they’re worked it into the contract with the government. So taxpayer dollars are buying this health insurance. Before Iraq and Afghanistan, the coverage for contractors would cost the government the equivalent of maybe 5% of the company’s payroll – reasonable enough. But these wars are different. AIG is Haliburton-like in both its dominance of the market (competition? Who needs competition?) and its absurd mark-ups. Even an Army Audit found their premiums to be “unreasonably high and excessive” – in some cases as high as 100% of the salary for a worker. Even post-audit and post the subsequent cost correction, we’re still talking premiums as high as 17% of payroll. So compared to historic norms, AIG is raking it in on this deal. They’re also making about 40% in profits — $1.5 billion in premiums last year with only $900 billion spent on claims.
If they’ve been making money hand over fist, and on the taxpayer dime no less, someone explain to me why that’s not enough. Explain to me why they can process the vast majority of inexpensive claims so quickly, but reject claims for serious injuries 44% of the time, and over 50% for mental health claims like PTSD. Explain to me why someone driving a truck that’s caught in the blast of a roadside bomb, or a cook in a barracks attacked by a suicide bomber, or a translator who comes home with PTSD has to be denied care, go through 6 to 7 months of mediation, frequently sue the insurance company if denied payment through mediation , and pay out of pocket (if he or she even can afford to) for care while this process drags on – especially since 75% of the time the insurance company winds up paying for the claim at the end of the process after all. Explain to me how their medical examiners feel comfortable saying there’s no evidence the patient acquired his/her PTSD as a result of working in Iraq, or that the prosthetic leg for someone who lost his limb to an IED is “not medically necessary.”
And explain to me again why I should even consider for a moment the AHIP and conservative argument that pushing everyone into private insurance through an individual mandate but not subjecting them to stronger regulation is the way to go. Explain to me why the monopoly of private insurance won’t just run as hog-wild, as profit-driven and as completely immoral as AIG’s actions have been. If this approach fails so badly the civilians we send into war zones, what makes us think it won’t fail us? “ end of story
PN Commentary: The real kicker is that every citizen in Iraq is covered with their own universal health care system. Americans are paying 11 billion dollars a month to fight a war for a country that has its own health care system.
However Americans cannot receive universal healthcare coverage in their own country because of Republicans who block universal health care because it is “too costly”. What Republicans do not know is – it is costing more to pay for no healthcare coverage of the sick and injured in long term care then it would if you covered them under a universal system. The Republican way of thinking lets the tax payer pay for healthcare – and lets the insurance companies off the hook.
The Editor.
(Photo credit: jamesdale10 on Flickr.)
TAGS: Iraq Injured Civilians, AIG denies claims, AHIP, AIG and Iraq, politics, politcol news, Defense Base Act, Injured War Zone Contractors, private health care, private insurance, healthcare coverage in Iraq.
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