Adam Linker, a policy analyst who often writes about health care issues on the North Carolina PolicyWatch blog for the N.C. Justice Center, has a piece about the "Top 10 Favorite Health Insurance Company Innovations." It's a timely send-up because of President Obama's health reform summit today.
Here's a link: The list is funny, but it would be a lot funnier if it were not right on target in so many cases.
Take Number 7 on the list, for example:
Charging women more than men for the same coverage. Let’s face it, women keep having children. When women have children they demand a room and a bed and all kinds of services that men of the same age rarely use. Luckily, insurance companies have figured out how to saddle women with the expenses of childbirth instead of making men, and society at large, share the costs. After all, men didn’t have anything to do with the pregnancy.
Or Number 4:
Lifetime caps. If you break an arm or scrape a knee you should know that your insurance company is there to help you pay the bill. But if you are going to get hit by a car or take a trip to intensive care, well, the insurance company isn’t going to sit around paying bills forever. After a certain amount you reach your lifetime insurance limit. That will teach you not to get cancer.
Linker notes: "I don’t understand why President Obama would want to thwart any of these great American inventions."
