Grassley: Government Is ‘a Predator,’ Not a Competitor

Outrageous.The true predators are the Insurers who dump people which cost them serious money.."Rescission" they call it.They trap people intentionally with vague,confusing application forms, or overly detailed ones ,so that there might well be inaccuracies in them,and of course don't bother to check the info either.Years or decades later when a person becomes seriously ill and costs them big money,they scour these applications for some inaccuracy as a pretect for getting rid of the patient.These poor folks are thrown to the wolves,they are uninsurable& will go bankrupt or just die.At the Senate hearings the CEO's of the Insurers tried to made it look as if this was a just aminor problem ,only a 0.5% of contracts, or so.However the fact of the matter is that the really large overall healthcare expenses are incurred by a small percentage of the insured,those with expensive chronic diseases who can still be kept alive.The rescission rate for these unfortunates is close to 40%.Thus those who really need their coverage are the ones likely to get shafted.The State of California has finally gone after these shysters (all the big names in the business) with punitive damages.Other States should follow suit.Medical Insurance needs drastic reform,so that good health outcomes get rewarded,instead of pleasing Wall St. by ripping off the insured.Other countries.,Switzerland and the Netherlands come to mind, have managed to do this,while providing universal coverage and still keeping costs below 10% of GDP (We spend 17%)

And insurance cos. are just good corporate citizens spreading the wealth among our, er, their elected representatives. I would imagine, in Grassley's opinion, that for Medicare to be "the best program that it can be," someone would need to make an obscene profit.