Broken systems produce endless amounts of controversy, and healthcare is entirely typical of the phenomenon.
In Albany, Andrew Cuomo issued subpoenas [1] to several large health insurance companies; the attorney general alleges that various insurers had used a wholly-owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth, Ingenix, to set reimbursements rates for consumers that were artificially low, leading to hundreds of millions in additional costs for consumers and, of course, correspondingly fatter profits for the insurers themselves.
“Ingenix is a wholly owned subsidiary of the industry, and the company is determining the rates that the insurance companies use to reimburse consumersâ€, Mr. Cuomo said.
Perhaps out of sheer embarrassment, the companies in question had no statement on the subject. As the saying goes, there ought to be a law - preferably an Elizabethan one that involves locking insurance executives in the stocks and encourages passers-by to throw offal at them.
In NY-29, meanwhile, Democratic challenger Eric Massa [2] traces the feudal abuses of the healthcare system to its roots: crappy bought-and-paid-for legislators, specifically, his republican opponent, Congressman Randy Kuhl.
Congress passed a landmark mental health parity law, the Wellstone Act, on March 5th. The Act also includes language, originally backed by Louise Slaughter, to prevent genetic discrimination [3] in healthcare. While the Wellstone Act passed the House and now moves to the Senate, Randy Kuhl voted against it. Kuhl's vote is doubly absurd, considering that the Act also creates parity for health issues stemming from substance abuse, which one might think of interest to someone with several DUIs under his belt [4].
Kuhl, of course, has received thousand of dollars in campaign donations from health industry lobbyists. Dollars that, as the Cuomo case shows, stem from a system abusively gamed against its own consumers.
A system, in short, that is broken.
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