Letters to America's Health Insurance Plans
Health Care for America Now members wrote over 1,700 letters to America's Health Insurance Plans. In their online forum, the insurance industry didn't even answer one. Here they are:
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| Douglas Cohen | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Mela London | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| John Davis | America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Elizabeth Butler | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Laina Lamb | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Jennie Kelley | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| gene sacco | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The strain you are putting on the populatation is causing a lot of stress. Your profits come first to you but your greed will be your undoing. |
| drew goffard | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Ruth Vitale | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Isn't it every person's right to have health care? |
| joyce kaye | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why do I have to contact an attorney to get my insurance co. to pay my bills? |
| Barbara Humphrey | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Thanks to your business practices, American's healthcare system is sick. You have taken the practice of medicine and dentistry out of the hands of physicians and dentists and made it yours. Medical necessity no longer dictates the care that insured people will receive, leaving them poor and sicker as a result. Your business practices leave millions under and uninsured. You are the sickness, and American's healthcare system cannot be cured until the insurance industry is removed from the system. |
| Zachary Bernstein | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Karen Schubert | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What do you plan to do to make full and appropriate health care available to the currently uninsured? |
| Patti Rosenwald | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Roger Hannah | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Lynda Alfred | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Mary Elizabeth Connelly | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Let's talk. 1) How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? 2) Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? 3) Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? 4) Do you enjoy being greedy? Makes you feel good? You know, people are more important than profits. Sincerely, Mary Elizabeth Connelly |
| Mary Lurie | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Tom Fineran | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put people's health before your profits? |
| Jared Riley | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? - Jared Riley |
| John Valiulis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: When comparisons are made between American private-insurance health plans and the national health care plans provided in all other western democracies (e.g. Canada, Europe), one of the glaring differences is the hugely larger percent of healthcare dollars spent on adminstrative costs in the US. Would the US healthcare industry ever commit to making the radical changes necessary to get admninstrative costs more in line with what such costs amount to (percentage wise) in the rest of the western world? John Valiulis |
| Lori Coulson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Do us all a favor -- stop practicing medicine without a license, i.e. telling patients they can't have the treatment, medicine, or surgery their doctors recommend. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit against you. Are you aware that your actions have killed people? Medicine and health insurance should never have been a "for profit" industry. If you really cared about the welfare of your fellow citizens you wouldn't have behaved the way you did and continue to do. Universal health care NOT universal coverage. |
| Stuart Chen-Hayes | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Where is the data that show that America's health insurance companies provide better care at a lower cost as compared to countries that have a single payer system that eliminates the profit motive and the waste currently skyrocketing US costs? |
| Brian Martinez | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Helen Anbinder | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Melissa Simmons | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Do you intend to take any steps to alleviate the high cost of health care, which is the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US? If so, what will you do? |
| Jill Davine | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Jay Allen | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: 1. How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? 2. Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? 3. Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Kelly Nordahl | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Shawn Wozniak | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Garald Lawrence | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you balance your need to make a profit with the health of participants in your plan? |
| Carol Collins | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations and times? Thank you! |
| Jason Kassouf | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Jeffrey Kowalski | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Andrew Jacobsen | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: When will our elected reprewsentatives realize that single payer universal health care is the most cost effective as well as the safest for the American people? |
| Pat Davis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why do insurance companies cover the cost of Viagra and not the cost of birth control? It seems to me it should be the other way around. Six billion "miracles" is enough!!! |
| Susan Hunter | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Toni Garmon | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DESERVE A SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE SYSTEM!!! JUST LIKE ALL OUR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND THEIR FAMILIES RECEIVE !!! " WE THE PEOPLE " SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE ROBBED BY THE CORRUPT GREEDY INSURANCE COMPANIES!!! TG |
| Terr Schroeder | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I would like to know what goals, if any, you have for including individuals and small businesses in insurance groups comparable to employer-sponsored plans in order to make coverage affordable. |
| James van Maanen | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: May I ask how you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? If you will answer that question, perhaps you will also release, in fact email me, the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times. Thank you! James van Maanen |
| Ann Barnes | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health decisions back in the hands of their doctors rather than an insurance clerk? |
| Brian McGee | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is it
that whenever I use my health insurance policy by going to the doctor and
using the policy for which I am paying Premiums, you immediately penalize me for using a product that I have paid for? My contract with the insurance provider states that if I pay my premiums, they will pay my hospital bills... so why is it that I get penalized every time my health insurance provider provides me with their end of the deal??? Sincerely, Brian McGee |
| Sharon Guynup | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Despite your industry's huge corporate profits, insurance premiums continue to skyrocket. My partner and I pay $1,600 per month for medical insurance--which is what the Irish pay for an entire year for a private health insurance plan. How do you intend to make medical insurance affordable and available to everyone? Sincerely, Sharon Guynup |
| Loreen Troy | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: It is a national disgrace that over 45 million Americans have no health insurance and that the coverage that is available is often extremely expensive and not comprehensive. When did greed become the national imperative rather than decency and concern for those less fortunate? What about altruism? How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Loreen Troy |
| Michael Matteucig | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industry's skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankrutcy in the United States of America is health care bills, caused by your proactice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Furthermore, how can you in good conscience deny health care for all of our citizens by denying access to said coverage due to your intentional implementation of preposterous costs, charges, limitations, and outright denial? I believe you should consider changing your business model to put people's health before your profits. You must release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times. Sincerely, Michael Joseph Matteucig |
| Brian Campbell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: This "listening tour" is a complete joke. All you care about is lining your bank accounts. Quit embarrassing yourself and insulting our intelligence. If you want to be taken seriously you need to take our needs seriously. Until then you have nothing of interest to share... |
| Mariu Suarez | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why are you against people having the choice of staying with their private insurance plan if they like it or joining a public plan if they want it? Are you afraid you could not compete with a public insurance plan? |
| Susan Draper | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: VHow do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| mira furman | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| mel melton | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why not show some integrity and ethical behavior and actually adopt a business model that is based on everyone's interest rather than your own greed? You would still generate profits that justify the investment, but you would also help sustain a healthy base of clients.I look forward to seeing a schedule of your tour, including locations and dates. |
| Scott Campbell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Nationalized healthcare WILL be a reality in the country. If you want to stay a part of the picture, now is the time to standardize, become not-for-profit and lower the costs to the consumer. |
| Margaret Alfoni | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider being a part of a combined private/public single payer healthcare system? How would invision this happening? |
| Michelle Dunlap | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: At a time of economic hardship for many Americans, we are having trouble meeting our everyday needs. With 47 million Americans estimated to lack any health insurance at all, from their jobs or the public sector, we are causing unnecessary strain on our economy. A healthy working population is more productive and more successful than one with poor health. In light of this, would you consider changing your business model to put people's health before profits? Accidents and disease will always be present, and you will never lack for customers. However, by making the healthcare industry about health instead of money, you will be doing your part to build a stronger America. |
| Daniela Nunez | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Although the majority of Americans have health insurance, it costs too much for too little. Many Americans are dissatisfied with the lack of coverage they're receiving, and pay higher premiums and yearly deductibles that make it harder to live the American dream. In a country so wealthy as ours, we shouldn't have to worry about going bankrupt over medical bills. That's where you come in. The insurance industry is making too much profit at the expense of hardworking Americans. Too much paperwork, too much red tape, and not enough serious examination at cost-cutting measures. It's true, the American people can play their part to prevent chronic diseases that would save the system billions of dollars. But what about people who have no choice, or who have a medical emergency where insurance is supposed to be the safeguard? Please work with us, not against us, in trying to find health care solutions that will save the system from collapsing on the American people. You might even make enough profit to keep you satisfied. Sincerely, Daniela Nunez an insurance payer in Austin, TX |
| Brian Gregory | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: We need comprehensive healthcare in the US now. It needs to cover medical, dental and vision and it needs to be tax supported and single payer. In order to control costs and provide for EVERYONE private, for-profit healthcare plans must be eliminated. Currently, denial of healthcare is a primary concern of private healthcare plans and that has brought us to the pathetic state we're in today. We should have the best healthcare in the world and we're not even in the top ten. |
| Paul McCullough | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Your industry is known for denying as many legitimate claims as possible. In light of this how do you justify your industries skyrocketing profits? |
| Katherine Bailey | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: It's over -- the old way of meeting America's healthcare needs. The new way will include the old businesses, or not. It won't if you don't listen, and change. It doesn't get any simpler than that. |
| Joe Gally | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is health insurance for working Americans becoming increasingly expensive while actual benefits and coverage get worse each year? I don't just hear this from my friends and neighbors, I hear it from almost every health care professional I talk to. Respectfully, |
| Greg Smith | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I would like to know if providing basic services (i.e. regular check-up, immunizations, well-baby care) and urgent care (i.e. non-life threatening medical services) to every American citizen free of charge is possible and if so, what are you doing to work toward that goal? Sincerely, Greg Smith Los Gatos, CA |
| David McGarry | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Frank Colletto | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans:How do you
justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of
bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of
denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Wendy Oser | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: # How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? # Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? # Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Beatrice Wadland | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Doctors should determine what tests and what medications patients have; not insurance companies. We need some basic form of health insurance for all--similar to Medicare with supplemental coverages available at additional cost. Too many Americans have health problems because they cannot afford hospitals or medications. |
| Gladys "Maria" Nockin | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I paid premiums to Blue Cross from age 19 to 48. I was almost never ill. Then, at age 48 I got a drug resistant pneumonia germ. I was at my home on Long Island and thought I might be better off to go to my California cabin and get more sun. I landed in the hospital there. Blue Cross dropped me because I came from out of state. I ended up with a hospital bill over $200 thousand and lost both my homes. We need low cost insurance for every American that will be there for them when they are ill in any state. The premiums should be on a sliding scale based on income. |
| Rene Siracusa | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: It's time for you to address why many medical procedures aren't covered by health insurance and why it's more affordable to travel to another country to have the procedure at an affordable rate...that INCLUDES travel and lodging expenses! How does that make the US one of the best countries in the world? This is as much a problem with the insurance industry as the greedy hospitals double and triple charging and profitting. |
| Margaret Welke | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I do not believe that health care should be a "for profit" business. Talk about a slippery slope. The easiest way to make money in insurance (health, auto, home) is to ask for payments, but make sure there is always a reason or some small print or a convoluted policy that no one can understand that will ensure that the companies never have to actually insure a person when they need it. We see this happening everyday. Additionally, there are numerous healthcare models, like witzerland, Thailand, and France that we as country would do best to emulate. |
| Judy Biedenbach | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I'm curious. I'm 56 years old and I pay for my health insurance out of my own pocket. What I pay is something just shy of $4,000 a year in premiums. If I visit the doctor three times a year, that's a lot. So, on top of my co-payment, each of my doctor's visits is costing me roughly $1,333. My policy also covers all sorts of things that I will never use, maternity benefits, for one. Naturally I'd prefer if my premiums were simply lower, but I don't see that happening. BUT, how about a rebate for those of us who don't abuse the system and run to the doctor's office or the Emergency Room every time we have an itch or a hangnail? Just a thought for you to consider. Judy |
| margaret spak | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What is your appeal process when a claim is denied? How many denied claims do you review on "appeal"? Of those denied claims how many do you actually then reimburse based on appeals? |
| Lianda Ludwig | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why in the world should health care be "for profit"? Why in the world should an administrator, who is NOT a trained doctor, be able to overrule tests that a doctor orders for the best care of their patient? Why in the world should a company be able to deny covering ANY person with ANY medical condition. Health Care is a HUMAN RIGHT - and should NOT be a privilege! |
| Kelli Baker | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Ernest Wright | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: You are simply making money, not providing a system that supports health care for your premium payers. You know it. We know it. Get into another business tomake money and let the health service needs of our country go to non-profits. This would lower costs and provide a better long term future for you as well. Your day is over - buggy whips went by the way side and so will you. Do the right thing and move on. |
| s Klukas | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: 1) Would you consider changing your profit plan to include caps on all expenses. To run it more like a program that is to help people not make millions in income for the few and also stop denying legitimate claims? |
| Mark Anderson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: One would assume that the purpose of health care is to ensure that all citizens have access to affordable, quality, preventative care. After all, if all citizens are not covered, public health is put at risk due to the spread of diseases by populations that are not vaccinated nor capable of paying for even the most basic of health services. So my questions for you are this: 1) How can you justify the current system of health insurance if your industry is gathering high profits while not actually contributing to the above purpose of health care, due to the consistent denial of legitimate claims and the forced bankruptcy of a mass of Americans due to their inability to pay for rising costs? 2) How are you and your colleagues attempting to address the increasing disparity between your profits and the health of citizens? |
| Jill Boutiette | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Susanne Madden | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: It would appear that most healthcare insurers are not managing care, but rather are managing the money. What is the value of managed care these days, when the end result seems to be less reimbursment for the providers of care, poor health outcomes as identified by WHO annually, but plenty of profit for insurers? What are insurers doing to make sure that adequate reinvestment is going in to society's well being? It's time for insurers to justify the profit-taking . . . |
| Chad Bobren | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What is more important to you, peopleís health or your profits? If people's health is the answer, why do you deny so many claims? Thanks, Chad |
| Jeanne St.John | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Long after procedures are in the mainstream of medical practice, health insurance companies categorize them as "experimental" or "investigational" as a way to deny coverage. Because of this practice I was forced to spend an additional 8 months in severe pain before an external review organization found in my favor and the surgery was scheduled. When will your coverage match real life medical practice? |
| Bonnie Gorman | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Health care should not be a profit-making service. How can you justify making money at the expense of patients who's legitimate claims you have denied? You have an ethical and moral obligation to provide comprehensive health care to all, not just to some. |
| Barry Ergang | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Many people avail themselves of health care plans, faithfully paying their premiums monthly, bimonthly or quarterly. Yet if they eventually require hospital stays and/or expensive treatments, you raise their rates. Why do you penalize them? I realize your only profitable customers are the healthy ones, but if your business is to help people, whether healthy or unhealthy, avoid massive bills, how do you justify raping them when it comes to premiums? |
| Amy Harlib | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Patrick Gallagher | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: As a retired person, on a very fixed income, I find it unreasonable that my healthcare costs are the largest expenditure that I have monthly. Between the amount I have deducted from my meagre social security check for Medicare and the monthly premiums for health and dentistry, I am overwhelmed. Added to that I also pay an additional amount for Prescriptions above my Part D coverage. Where is this going to end? This is criminal! |
| David Fornear | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How can a 50 year old man, on a fixed income, continue to pay over $500.00/month thru state sponcered insurance? (Kentucky Access). The rates really jumped when I turned 50 and will only continue to rise. I have to maintain some type of insurance, with a pharmacy rider. |
| Richard Jewell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? Thank you for your time. Please respond in a timely manner. |
| Thomas Roberts | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify the huge profits that many insurance companies have seen recently and what link do you see between these profits, the high number of medical bankruptcies in the U.S., and our nation's 47 million uninsured individuals? Thank you! Thomas Roberts |
| Betty Smith | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The amount of money that insurance companies spent is questioning if the person has an legitimate illness by their standards. |
| thomas tague | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: i believe
that the healthcare industry needs to be nationalized andthe profit motive
needs to be taken out of this equation. when will the insurance industry ever
work with that model? listening tour is a sham propaganda tour of the insurance industry, if they listened they'd know america is suffering because of them. we can't afford your product and won't be buying it much longer. if i have my way. fuck the health insurance industry and their listening tour. that they care is a lie. don't be fooled |
| CLYDE GEORGE | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: It is every american's right to quality, affordable health care. So do what has to be done to allow that. First of all, eliminate greed. In fact, that is all that is necessary to fix it. Thank you. Sincerely YOurs, Clyde George |
| Roberta Gibboney | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How can the health care providers and health insurance companies work together to ensure that the millions of Americans -- including many working Americans -- who don't have access to affordable health care will have it? How can the system be changed so that it encourages individuals and families to use less expensive options and preventive care rather than using hospital emergency rooms as "primary care providers"? For example, I have a 29-year-old daughter who is the single mother of two preschoolers. She is working 3 jobs but still qualifies for government-supported health care. That has been an improvement over no health care, but the crazy thing is that when her 3-year-old has an ear infection flare-up after office hours, she has to go to the hospital emergency room for him to be seen instead of a nearby "immediate care" facility. That just doesn't make sense! It has to be more expensive for the system to send her to the hospital. |
| Lisa Benham | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I have seen too many stories about one accident bringing down a whole "secure" lifetime of work and planning, due to the cost of health care - and these are insured people. I'm already choosing between insurance and tuition, and other basics, because insurance doesn't even seem to be that anymore. How can we make insurance work as it once did, and still does, in all other industrialized nations? If basic health care distribution isn't a human rights and equity issue that speaks to us as a community, than what is? |
| Debra Brown | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: You should be ashamed of yourselves. How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Unless you are willing to consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits, your efforts with this tour is a waste of time and a joke. If you are not afraid to confront the above two issues, will you also release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Jerry Budge | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? The richest nation in the history can not afford to insure it's citizens. Seems strange doesn't it. |
| Janet Lee | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: My limited experience for myself and family members with health insurance coverage has been, with the exception of AARP-affiliated plans, that insurance companies routinely drag their feet, change claims requirements and information, etc. to delay paying claims, clearly in the hope that people will just give up! We've been told the claim was never received, it was sent to the wrong address, proper claims and information were not included, etc, etc, etc. Many legitimate claims are denied. Clearly, insurance companies' priority is profit, not health care coverage. That is probably to be expected and is the reason I favor a single-payer, government-run system of health care for all, in which profit is not the prime goal. It's working for you.. your profits are high, but it isn't working for the people you purport to cover! |
| Marsha charney | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Please clarify how your profits have constantly gone up and the number of claims you deny has also gone up. Is it because your business plan puts money before people's health? Why is it that people with health care choose not to go to a doctor because of the minimum coverage their plan provides? How much money have you given to political camopaigns that will imopact legislation dealing with the healthcare industry? Will you publish this list? |
| Henry Savioli | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Your industry is one of the most pathetic and crooked ones in the world. How do your exectutives sleep and night and look in the mirror in the morning? |
| Adam Zion | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: It's pretty much axiomatic that, in any profit-driven system, any outcome other than profit is a side-effect. In other words, in our current for-profit health care system, healthy people are a *side effect.* Think about that: healthy people are *not* the intended product of our current, profit-drive health system: profit is. And you're certainly making profit hand over fist. Can you justify your huge profits at the cost of Americans health? Can you even consider being less profitable if it meant that Americans would be healthier? Do you have the intestinal fortitude to stand for health, rather than the worship of the almighty dollar? -Z |
| marilynn haynes | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why don't you let the doctor determine which prescriptions their patients need? My insurance company denies some prescriptions and changes others as if they know more than the doctor expert who is prescribing. With these outrageous prices being charged, at least they should allow what the doctor treating the patient prescribes. Will appreciate your consideration & attention to this important matter. Thanks. |
| David First | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is that I muat pay one third of my income for Medicare supplimental insurance when I also receive Medicare and Medicaid? I am now nearlt 88 years old and find health to be a luxery |
| Harry and JoAnn Avery | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Should everyone's health care, that of every inhabitant, rich or poor be the subject of profit-minded organizations? The obvious answer is NO! Health care should not be be subject to money making considerations. The nation's future depends on the good health of everyone so that all can contribute to the nation's prosperity and well being. If America's Health Insurance Plans were truly interested in the health of Americans they would either make health care available to all or get out the business. |
| William P. White | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Since the private insurance route has not lead to wider health insurance coverage and more affordable health care for all, why wouldn't a single payer system (which admittedly would have a very limited role for private insurance companies) not be a better, more efficient means to deliver better health care services across the country to many more people? |
| Danny DeTora | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Kirby Cole | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business practices to put people's health before your profits? Thank you, Kirby M. Cole |
| Steven Kostis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Eithne Davis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you explain the fact that we pay more for health care in this country than any other developed country and get less for it? The difference as I see it is that here we have an industry that is making vast profits at the expense of peoples health. |
| Nancy Smith | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you reconcile the high profits in your industry with the fact that health care bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in America, and the fact that those bankruptcies are caused by your companies denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Shouldn't the system be run like Medicare- Medicare for all, where everyone gets covered, and healthy and back contributing to society? Also, I would like to know with 4 days at least advanced notice where and when your listening tour will be so I can inform my friends. Without this schedule, your tour appears to be nothing more than a smoke screen to say whatever you want about the public response. Thank You, Nancy Smith |
| Marianne Cochrane | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your buisness model to put people's health before your profits? |
| Patricia Roling | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is it that your CEO's and top people make more than most of the doctor's and nurses who actually care for the ailing? Does it seem right to make a profit on someone's misfortune? Insurance used to depend on investments of their money for profit, not by milking the insured. You are overcharged by the hospitals and that is your fault for not paying bills for all sorts of stupid reasons. We need to put health care back on track! And while I am venting why is "overweight" considered a health problem in our country until we attempt to get insurance and then you say we aren't covered for treatment as it is not a health issue. You can't have it both ways! |
| Bonnie Kelchner-Bunn | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why must claims be submitted to insurance companies as many as three times before the legitimate claim is paid? |
| Diana Davis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How is a person who has a pre-existing condition supposed to get health coverage if every insurance company denies coverage based on pre-existing conditions? Do you believe it is morally ethical to deny people insurance coverage because they may cost an insurance company a little more money? |
| Claire Coleman | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Sincerely, Claire Coleman |
| Mana Tahaie | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: At a time when the failing economy is leaving more and more Americans struggling to cover their basic expenses, we're told that the accountability rests with every day people ó when in fact we're really subject to the rules created by large corporations, whose policies seem to be deliberately misleading and complicated, in order to maximize profits and minimize service delivery and transparency. Your industry is boasting skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills ó caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible. We need a system that is transparent, easy to comprehend, and actually delivers the services it claims to offer. Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Patrick Crisler | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? Patrick |
| Luis Mackenzie | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Susan Fine | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why do you resist having a health plan for America that offers universal coverage to the poor, to children and to the elderly? Our current system is an embarrassment on the world stage. Other countries have managed to do it; why can't we? |
| Lee Ann Taylor | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will profit over true patient care continue to be your highest motivation? This is unpatriotic, callous and not within the boundries of any known religious pratice. How do you justify this in the face of the present American economic disaster? |
| anita culp | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How about some REAL insurance? I'd be willing to pay a small monthly premium for coverage only for catastrophic situations--ie, high deductible. But NO, I have the "choice" of paying $500/mo for coverage I don't need ($20 doctor visits, no dental, chiropractic, acupuncture, preventative, etc) or $350/mo for so-called "high deductible health plan." All of your plans are a rip-off. And then you spend millions of dollars (in staff costs) searching out excuses to deny claims. So will you invite ME to your "Listening Tour?" What a joke. |
| Guy Sturino | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would the providers of national health care be willing to submit to a limit on profit and oversight by a government committee? |
| Kenneth Biggs | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans:I am tired of
this system which controls what the doctors are allowed to do. We need a medicare for all plan which gets rid of the profit motive. |
| Walter Daniels | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: We have just been though the process of purchasing long term health care insurance. Both of us needed to jump through multiple hoops about decades old conditions that have proven through the passage of time that they are not a problem as well as doctors statements that they weren't a problem. In both cases our cost was increased dramatically. My view of insurance is that it is only useful if it covers almost everyone without questions and spreads the cost over everyone.To achieve good rates you have to market and price (perhaps force via regulation, e.g. autoliability coverage) so that the well as well as the sick are in the program and average out the expenses. Would you consider implementing insurance on such a basis? |
| Susan Stouffer | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am writing to ask you what you plan to do about people like me who had cancer as a child without recurrance but still cannot get a private insurance policy!?!?!? This is becoming a huge issue for me as fewer and few businesses and even non-profits offer group healthcare plans. Should someone who had cancer as a child at 11 years of age, pay the price of lack of insurance for the rest of her life??????? |
| Johanna Riordan | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Americans have some of the lowest standards of healthcare in the Western world, and yet we spend more money than any other country in the world on health care. The reason for this is shareholders in privately-held insurance companies demands for profits. Healthcare is a basic right, and no one should be making profits off of someone else's illness. The value for money here in America as far as healthcare is concerned is deplorably low. Instead of spending so much money to deny claims and deny care, please change your models to actually help the people you insure, instead of driving so many people who have health insurance coverage into bankruptcy each year. |
| charle Nielsen | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What would you suggest as a remedy to our health care problems, i.e. lack of coverage, costs, etc.?? |
| Ellen Field | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Doesn't it seem strange to you that the rest of the world's developed countries already have some form of universal health care???? And according to the WHO, we're not doing so well in quality of health care compared to countries with universal health care??? |
| Relora Joyce | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider working with the government to transition to a single payer plan which would truly insure health care for every citizen? |
| victoria williams | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I have insurance that is costing me $480 a month. I have gotten some shoulder problem that renders certain movements impossible. i went to the therapist where she told me exercises to do. then i was billed $450 for these sessions. Why did the insurance not pay for this? This country needs health care for all. This is what our taxes should be paying for instead of building a huge military complex. I have been ill in Spain and the doctors make house calls there..the cost is minimal and the doctor seems to care. |
| Ted Schulze | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The only solution that will help the American people is affordable healthcare for everyone. Everyone gets the same regardless of income. What are you doing to begin this. |
| joan mccoy | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Please hear the truth of the failed health care.We need health care for all,not extreem profits for the industry.Health Care should be just what the words say,Health Care for all,like we have education for all. |
| Amy Bosch | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How can you justify your industry's skyrocketing profits when health care in this country is a nightmare & so many people are left without it? Disgusting greed of your industry - you should be ashamed of yourselves. You call yourselves American? |
| Jon Drucker | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: There's a basic disconnect in how Americans see health care and how the system actually works. I applaud you for listening to us, your customers, and hope this will be a step towards a true dialogue on how to make our health care work for all of us. A good start would be for our nation's insurers to address publicly this simple problem: Why is our existing health care system based on care avoidance rather than the provision of care? I think most of us understand the basic economic model of minimizing costs in order to keep any business running, whether it's for profit or not. But the health care industry stands out as the one that avoids costs by avoiding providing its most basic service or product: actual health care. No other sector of our economy works in this way. Americans need this addressed, explained, and ultimately fixed. A clear and simple answer to this question would be an enormous first step in that direction. Finally, I hope you will release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times. I look forward to this historic dialogue. |
| Anna Carter | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? Anna Carter |
| Adrienne Happy | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Insurance is about protecting people's financial health by pre-planning for ill physical health. Yet thousands, including myself, are denied health insurance before they are even really sick. Why deny for so many mundane things? Why not provide stipulations regarding certain procedures, where pre-existing conditions are not reasons for lack of care. Why not put people first? |
| Virginia Daley | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am self employed and my HMO premiums are SO high I can't afford the co-pay to see a doctor! WE ALL NEED AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE!!! Stop the profiteering and the cover-up! |
| pete davis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: If insurance companies are posting record profits, then why are the premiums paid still rising? At what point are stockholder's interests secondary to the clients' interests? Are CEO compensation packages in line with reasonable management:employee salaries and compensation? |
| Debra Petersen | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The health insurance industry appears to focus on maximizing profit, not by promoting greater efficiency, but by AVOIDING performing their central function. In short, anybody who shows any indication that that they might actually use the insurance (pre-existing condition, etc.) is simply refused coverage. Isn't this in conflict with the fundamental reason for the existence of insurance, which is to assure that people have necessary coverage? Doesn't the fact that there are about forty-seven millions Americans without coverage show that there is a serious problem here? |
| Jon Fiebelkorn | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why have
premiums and the profits of your industry both risen while your industry
continues to reduce the claims it will cover? Health care costs are the
number one cause of bankruptcy in the US -- is it beneficial to your industry
to bankrupt your customers? Would you consider releasing the full schedule of
your listening tour so people can know when and where to attend? Thank you, Jon Fiebelkorn |
| Dinkar Kasbekar | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: We would love to see your CEOs get so fat and obese that they have serious diabetic, cardiovascular and other maladies that make them pay for their own health care from their ill-begotten obscene profits without contributions from the working poor and middle classes of America. |
| Samuel Pearson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What is the total annual expenditure of all private health insurers on public relations, advertising, lobbying, etc., and what percentage of this total would be required to provide universal health care coverage for all Americans under a single payer plan? Relatedly, could the present plans not be satisfied simply to carve up the excess among themselves with the understanding that henceforth they would be relieved of all work requirements such as lobbying, competing for business, denying claims, and other difficult tasks that are currently so burdensome? Thanks for your forthright and honest answers. |
| Micah Landau | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? Thanks! Micah Landau |
| Anna Ghonim | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: You know that you are not interested in a national single payer health care system, because it would pretty much put you, unneeded middlemen of health care who profit while not really providing any direct services, out of business. Not all of us are fooled by your listening tour, supposedly to hear about what's wrong with the existing system. After all, all you really need to do is watch Michael Moore's 90 minute movie and you will understand the subject quite well. Since it is your industry, you already know what you do and you have no interest whatsoever in fixing it. This system is not even broken from your perspective. What I recommend is for you to change your business model completely to put peopleís health before your profits, and release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times, for a start, if you are truly interested in helping regular citizens access health care when and where they need it, like citizens of all other first world countries across the globe. |
| Eric Zinn | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Although I am adequately covered through my union and my employer's health plan, there are millions of people who are not. That the richest country in the world can not supply health care at affordable prices is a betrayel of the democratic principals on which this country was founded. Excuses, raised premiums and outrageous compensation for health care executives is not the way to protect Americans. The ball is in your court to make an honest effort at reform! Remember ... Prevention is worth a pound of cure! Or more appropriately ... spend pennies NOW to avoid spending dollars LATER!. |
| michael maggied | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Sean Sardari, CPE | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: US is the only industrial country in the world that is still held hostage by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Ellen Smith | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What are you prepared to do to make insurance affordable for those who do not have access to employer-based plans? Why has the industry not made insurance pools available for the self-employed? |
| Amber Willey | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What would it take for you to change your business practices so that you put people's health first, even over your profits? |
| fred powell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: if you don't act congress will have to. We are fed up! |
| Pamela McCann | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? As an example, my mother can barely afford her medicines each month while living on a fixed income. As winter approaches how is she supposed to choose between heat or her medicines. As a nation we really can do better. Sincerely, Pamela McCann |
| Larissa Hersom | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why do the majority of health insurance plans exclude Americans suffering from the disease of Morbid Obesity from receiving valid, researched, and proven surgical treatment? |
| John LeMoine | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industry's skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible. |
| Bruce Edelstein | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why can't you support a not for profit model offering the best and affordable health care that's accountable and offers your companies reasonable salaries? Health care is too important and a healthy society is dependent upon the security of it's population to feel secure concerning health care. |
| Kenny Belford | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Individual with pre-existing conditions, serious or not, are routinely declined for coverage. The change in the health insurance industry that will occur under a Democrat in the White House will be brought about by your own actions. By wide margins Americans have indicated that the current system needs changing, and the policies of the health insurance industry have created this view. When massive changes occur, it will be to the benefit of America. If you had been better stewards of the trust placed with you this change probably wouldn't be an issue, but now America is right on the edge of fixing the problem you've created. |
| David Adames | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Theressa Marklund | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Having worked in the Health Insurance business for a number of years, and now being retired I now know why the retired person feels insurance poor. My Medicare Supp Premium has been increased twice this year by 30%, and I have yet to even file a claim in the 2 years I have been covered by this plan. Keeping in touch with my last employer, her business also received a premium increase this year of 30%. This employer has around 50 employees. She pays 100% of the health coverages for employees, and 50% for dependents. At one time she paid 100% for employee and dependent. Due to the increase in cost for the Health Coverage she was forced to go to an even higher deductible, and drop the prescription drug coverage. If Insurance Companies keep insisting on this type of underwriting, and premium increases there will be more uninsured americans. Does this not hurt your bottom line profits? But then, you will just increase premiums to keep that bottom line staus quo. Bottom line, insurance companies do not care about the health of the general public. Your main concern is charge more, and give less coverage for the money. Theressa Marklund |
| JE Cooper | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: If universal healthcare gets adopted, why should my tax dollars go into profits for the insurance industry instead of funding better healthcare for all. |
| Kathleen Magor | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Lauren Wendelken | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I recently discovered that the cost of insurance was four times the price - for the exact same coverage - when the person was insured under an individual policy rather than a group policy. That is to say, if the group policy rate was $400 per month per person, that same insurance coverage (for the same person) under an individual policy would cost $1600 per month, per person. (These numbers are very close to the prices I was quoted - from Blue Cross Blue Shield - thus not an exaggeration in the least.) What is the financial justification for this cost increase? How is an individual policy four times more costly than a group policy? I know of no other industry where the price for a service can vary so widely, and for something as essential as health insurance, this cost MUST be justified, especially as it is so prohibitive to both individuals and small businesses with fewer than two full-time employees. |
| Mary Jo Stockwell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industry's skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible?. |
| Kevin Gallagher | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would not a single payer system be mucher cheaper ? What are your calculations for savings in paperwork alone ? |
| Margaret Sterling | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Your companies are nothing but greedy profiteers who care nothing about people. Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? It is certain that you won't unless forced. The people of the country are becoming aware of your greed and are finally organizing to stop you. Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? Probably mot but one day soon you will be forced to. |
| Ellen Tracy | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Do you have any intention of instituting meaningful changes in the health insurance industry to benefit the consumer? |
| Lee Smith | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I worked for 10 years for a company that paid over $1,000. a month and at the end of my job was $1,400 a month. I lost my job because of the budget, partly because of the health care cost, and now I cannot afford medical insurance. So the way I figure it, you have made approximately $100,000 from me since I had little in the way of health care needs and now at 63 years old I could lose everything I have worked for because of an illness or accident. Wouldn't it be better to eliminate you from the equation all together and find a way to get universal health care for all within the model of social security? |
| Bobby ann Packwood | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The only people who can afford health insurance are the wealthy. Or the increasingly few whose jobs provide health insurance as a benefit. Those of us who have health insurance have health decisions made by MBA's employed by the insurance companies - NOT MD's with our best interests in mind. My daughter was sent home hours after hip surgery - throwing up all the way home - a 250 mile drive. The reason she was released in that condition? Her health insurance plan wouldn't pay for an overnight stay. Even though her surgeon clearly saw the need for her to do so. Our health care system should be the best in the world - because of the profiteering of the insurance companies it doesn't even rank in the top 10. How can you live with yourself knowing while your profits are increasing at a record pace - while uninsured working age adults and children can not afford basic health care? |
| Sharyn Selskey | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: My husband is a senior and ineligible for Medicare and I am not yet old enough for Medicare....we can't afford insurance putting us in a very precarious position. How do you justify the extremely expensive medical costs in the US when the Canadians provide the same services at little or no cost to patients??? Your costs are way out of line! It's time for universal medical care in the states and stop the windfall medical profits the insurance industry is making!!!! Sharyn Selskey |
| Ruth Apter | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: If health insurance companies make universal health care available and affordable then private companies will not be put out of business. How could you make this happen? With all Americans insured wouldn't the administrative cost per person go down? Everyone needs quality medical care. How are you solving the problem? |
| Nancy Basinger | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: It seems to be almost impossible for an individual to get health insurance if he/she has pre-existing conditions. What is your industry going to do to qualify all individuals for health insurance, at least for catastrophic coverage? |
| Tim Duda | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Aren't your exploitive policies responsible for much of the economic hardship of many Americans? How about elevating health care to your primary concern over bottom line profits? |
| john currier | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Please make a broad public issue of the entire schedule of your listing tour. Dates, locations, times. |
| Julie Estlick | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, a result of the practice of denying as many legitimate claims as you possibly can. I've had to fight with insurance providers many times to pay claims for things that are clearly covered. How can you justify your industry's skyrocketing profits on the backs of working Americans who have a right to decent and affordable health care?? |
| Alison Monroe | Dear Insurance Companies, I am fifty-five, and because I had sciatica a couple of years ago (mild sciatica that went away by itself), I can't get health insurance for less than $500 a month. This took up my ENTIRE income for last year ($6000 a year). I haven't actually seen a doctor for a year because I can't afford the $50 copay! Good thing I am healthy--for the moment! My kids have the state SCHIP program, which they get for $13.50 a month between them, and they can see a doctor any time they want for $5. They get inexpensive eyeglasses and fillings as well. I can't get state Medicaid health insurance for myself because we have $5000 in savings. I refuse to spend that down because people my age ought to have savings. So what can we do? I'm paying $500 a month for basically nothing, my kids are paying $13.50 a month for all they need. The difference is the free market system--which is broken--versus the state single payer system--which is the way to go. We need to dissolve the private insurance system, which passes middle-aged, old, and sick people from one worthless plan or non-plan to another, until they give up or die. You guys need to help us convert the whole country to a single-payer health plan like SCHIP. Get on board and get ready for the future. |
| Mark & Paula Thuerman | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| L Vista Michael | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: 1. Why is your coverage consistently NOT designed to encourage preventive medicine by offering no incentives or even coverage of good life style habits, low weight, non smokers, regular exams prior to illness. 2. Why don't you offer free immunizations for children and older adults. Your profits indicate that you can afford it and it would cost the system much less if these populations didn't get so sick. 3. Are medical decisions of what your insurance will or will not cover made my medical experts or insurance personnel? 4. Will you release a full schedule of your listening tour including dates, locations and times? |
| eloise marszalek | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Lee Davis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: There is no way to provide Adequate health Care, As a health care Management System, you need to deny Health care to make a profit. only Health Providers can make a profit, through improvements in the way Health Care delivered to the Patient. Health Insurance companies make money by gambling that we won't get sick. If you don't own a hospital you need to get out of this business. Lee S Davis Portland, Oregon |
| Nick Beard | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Sarah Hearon | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I have been dismayed for many years by the profit-making emphasis of the health management systems. I know that so-called health care programs are primarily determined to deny as many requests for care as possible. When I look at the list of highest-paid executives in my county and across the nation and see that HMO executives are at the top, with salaries of millions of dollars a year, I GET SICK. That is why health premiums are so insanely high. That is why we must have a different health care system that is devoted to providing services to all people in this country. Please publish your scheduled stops on your "listening tour" so that I may see if you will be in my area. I have more to say. Thank you. |
| Vernon Huffman | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What service am I paying for when I buy insurance? Am I just betting against myself at Las Vegas odds? Isn't it true that if all the money we now pay for insurance went into health care, we'd have all the care we need and you'd be out of business? How much money does your industry (cabal) pay Members of Congress to keep that from happening? |
| Brian Meyers | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How much does the insurance industry influence a doctors patient treatment and prescribed medication? |
| RayDelle Kistler | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will the decision to have medical procedures be governed by the attending doctor or an office worker? |
| A Bonvouloir | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: When are you going to begin blueprints for converting to a single payer, universal, non-profit health plan for all Americans? Will you please consider using the VA Healthcare system as aplace to start? (Exclude the DOD) Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| DM Scippa | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify charging huge monthly payments for self-employed people, or older people even if they are in EXCELLANT health. How do you justify charging more money for coverage as a person ages? (That's called discrimination). How do you justify not paying for a prescription that a provider has ordered by saying "it's not on our formulary"; especially when a change of birth control pill can end up in an unwanted pregnancy? AND, on top of that charging exorbitant monthly co-pays for said pills, and not allowing a woman to obtain more than 1 pack at a time? What exactly are "reasonable and customary" fees and why won't anyone talk about them? Why won't most insurance companies pay for preventive and complementary medicine that can really help a person deal with stress, especially since the NIH has said that 85% of all illness is based on the bodies' inability to deal with stress? |
| Don Lichtenberg | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Please get out of the business and support single-payer health insurance for all, modeled after Medicare. Thank you. Don Lichtenberg |
| Jeff Lucier | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: My wife and I are working middleclass Americans (not certain about the "middleclass" anymore) with two children, ages 10 and 11. We have health insurance through the State of Nevada public employees benefits program. The legislature just cut 24 million dollars from the insurance, and now our premiums have skyrocketed and the care we receive is no where as good as it was. What does AHIP plan to do about rising premium costs and poor service delivery? My family is quickly running out of income to keep up with costs that are out of control. I would expect that if AHIP is serious about working towards affordable health care with quality service delivery, the way insurance is handled in this country would change for the better. Jeff E. Lucier |
| Christa McNamee | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Your industry has skyrocketing profits, yet the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible; in some cases, you delay payment for treatment, in the hope that the sick person dies and you can avoid cost - how can than change? |
| Carrie Drapac | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is it that preventative health care is very rarely covered by insurance plans in this country? For example, someone undergoing back pain would be covered if they opted for dangerous and often unhelpful back surgery but wouldn't be covered for orthopedic massage or chiropractic care. When does the insurance industry plan on helping Americans receive the preventative care they need to avoid a life of pain? |
| Sammy Fratto | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans:How do you
justify your industry's skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of
bankruptcy in America is health care bills and drug costs caused by your
practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? How do you justify the numbers of people who cannot get insurance coverage? |
| Lauren Devine | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Tanya Kasim | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I have a question: Suppose somebody, other than myself, has a somewhat long undiagnosed thyroid condition that has left him (or her) unable to live a relatively normal life. How would your insurance plan cover it? By the way, I'm currently covered by BUPA International. Sincerely, Tanya Kasim |
| Joseph Brennan | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Kim Williams | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: In your efforts to reduce your own costs, why have you never worked to reduce the costs of perscription drugs? Where were you when the drug companies wrote the medicare plan for congress? |
| Mark Schuknecht | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: When are you going to change your business practices to allow the poorest people in this country equal access to affordable, comprehensive health care? |
| DOUGLAS Flint | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: As you know, the business model you have subscribed to is unsustainable in the current market.less people can afford health care and more are looking to the government for an answer to our health care woes. If your plan isto hang ok to this plan to the bloody end it will only increase the bad feelings of the buying public, your public. I am pleading with you to turn this around and make real change without government intervention. I don't think you will like the alternative. Sincerely, Doug Flint |
| Alex Cybriwsky | You do LESS to promote health than you do to DENY it. In fact your business model helps makes Americans more sick, not only by denying millions from receiving health insurance, but also in other ways. Lack of central control for drug prices has caused simple medications to cost about 10 times more in our country than almost anywhere else on our planet. So much of America's health care money goes to pay for your disgusting paperwork and administrative salaries, but then you still deny claims and encourage patients not to get needed procedures. Your business model is opposed to promoting health. |
| Jean Poehler | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why do our health insurance costs increase annually, while the insurance company profits increase annually? By the way, what is the full schedule of your listening tour - this is the first I have heard of it. With some of your profits why don't you create a pool for the people who cannot afford health insurance. That way they can receive health care at insurance company rates - not the hospital rates. |
| joe wetherell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why shouldn't everyone--people, corporations, and yes, even governments be allowed to negotiate on their own for the best and lowest cost care possible? |
| Dean Wallace | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: If I pay for insurance for years on end, and I never end up using it, shouldn't I get something back at the end of each year? And why, if I pay for insurance, do I have to fight with the insurance company just to use the service I'm paying for? Why so greedy? When did profits become more important than helping people? How do you sleep at night knowing you've played a major role in ruining so many people's lives? |
| Helen Reilly | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put people's health before your profits? I am sure that if there were a collaborative effort between all sectors of the population including doctors, patients, advocates for all, that we could come up with a system that would be a win-win situation for all involved. I requires a willingness to be willing to work together for the common health care including all people, not just the ones who can afford it. |
| Doug Cecere | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? - Doug Cecere |
| Angie Collins | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How can you justify the obscene costs of prescription drugs? Many people can't afford to get theright medicine and yet the drug companies are making huge profits- and much of it due to the bombardment of television ads pushing drugs on the public! It's really criminal. |
| Susan Williams | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How much of what Americans pay for their health care is eaten up by executive percs/bonuses, payments to lawyers who draft policies and defend bad-faith insurance lawsuits, and salaries for people whose primary job function is to deny claims for coverage? |
| Amy Allina | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions about the state of health insurance in the U.S. Women have much at stake in the debate over health reform, and there are many opportunities for the insurance industry to reform its policies and reject practices that are hurting women's health. 1. Insurance companies sometimes refuse to sell individual health insurance policies to people who are sick, like women with breast cancer or diabetes. Will you promise to end this outrageous and unfair practice? 2. The New York Times recently revealed that some insurance companies won't sell health insurance to women who have had cesaean section deliveries. This is really unfair, especially when about one-third of pregnant women now have their babies by c-section. How can you justify denying coverage because a woman has had a c-section? What will you do to make sure women won't be denied health insurance because of their pregnancy histories? 3. In most states insurance companies can charge women more than they charge men for the same health insurance plan, and they often do. This gender discrimination squeezes the budgets of women and families and it's not fair. Will you stop discriminating against women and making health care unaffordable for us by charging women more than men? I look forward to your response to these questions and I hope you will release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations and times so that women across the country will have the opportunity to engage in this important dialogue. Sincerely, Amy Allina Raising Women's Voices for the Health Care We Need http://raisingwomensvoices.net |
| Jan Jarvis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you propose to cover all Americans for a reasonable cost and still make the profits you have made and pay your executives the egregiously greedy salaries that they now make? Can you put people before profits in all cases? jan jarvis |
| Donald McLellan | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The cost benefit ratio of health insurance has degraded to the point that the industry appears to be run by robber barons.It's no longer a matter of economics, it has begun to look like a means of disempowering the lower and middle classes. |
| Yehuda Yannay | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: 1. In countries with universal health insurance, such as Germany, insurance companies are just as rich as in the USA. 2. The government does not run the it, but established minimum standards of insurance and requires everybody to pay in according to income. 3. Nobody is going bankrupt because they can't pay a medical bill: both insured and insurers. |
| Matt Kennelly | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I was diagnosed two years ago at eh age of 37 with a very agressive and expensive kidney didease. I will have this disease my entire life and will require transplant/transplants throougout my life as there is no current cure. How can the industry justify denying me coverage once I exaust my current lifetime cap on my private insurance? With the current laws in place I will then have to burn through all my assets until I am destitute and can qualify for state and federal assistance. |
| Aaron parker-Fasel | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am eligible for COBRA for only 18 months. This benefit has allowed me to work for a nonprofit organization and still receive the benefits I got from my previous employer. What good is it after 18 months? Why is cutting it off a good thing at all, especially if someone is willing to pay for it? Regards, Aaron |
| Pat Musick | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How can a person like me--well-educated, property-owning, but self-employed as an artist, with no predictable set income from month to month--secure some kind of affordable health care without either going broke meeting astronomical monthly premiums my self-employment can't guarantee, or losing everything I own in case of a catastrophic illness since I can't afford health insurance? |
| Elizabeth McSweeney | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you jistify your industry;s skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations and times? How about peoples health becoming a priority? |
| joan sugarman | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: If you are truly on a "listening tour" I have a whole list of concerns I would like you to "listen to". My family has been severly affected by your policies and the fact that health care is not affordable. My son suffers from severe health problems and we wonder if he will just be left to die, since he can not get care. How do you justify your profits and policies? Shouldn't health be put before profits? Please release a full schedule of your "listening tour", including dates, locations and times. |
| Sarah McUmber-House | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: You sit in a position of 'middleman' between America's Healthcare Providers and the people in need of that healthcare. Besides making mountains of paperwork and taking a lot of money, what is your real contribution to the real health care of all Americans? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? When healthcare bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in America, how do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits? Your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible has put a very heavy load on the average citizen, who pays up front for insurance, only to find it too often won't cover them when they are actually in need. Also, please release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times. If you genuinely want the public's input, you need to give them a real chance to respond. |
| Saren Nelson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: My husband and I are self employed and until this year were unable to even afford health insurance. It is costing us thousands of dollars to have basic coverage, with a high deductible. Now we have found out the basic premium is going up almost a hundred dollars a month this Fall. How can you justify your high industry profits when you leave people like us with very few options that we can afford? |
| Stephen Carll | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Scott Schlosser | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I have been a user of Enbrel for a few years to control my psoraisis. In the past year or so, my health insurer - United HealthCare - has decided that I only need the injections once a week instead of twice a week. Needless to say, my disease has returned with a vengence. My doctors and I have appealed to United HealthCare twice now to get the prescription increased but our requests have fallen on deaf ears. Clearly, United HealthCare is trying to cut costs by limiting my prescription. My question to you is this: How can ANY insurer turn its back on their members, claiming to control costs, when they pay their CEO over $1.5 BILLION IN SALARY A YEAR!!! American health insurance is in a crisis while FAT CAT PROFITEERS suck the American public dry with ever increasing premiums. Americans are faced with pre-existing condition regulations to prevent some of us from obtaining alternative insurance, confusing policy regulations, and massive red-tape. It is time to socialize our medical system and through you out of business! |
| Kerwin Schaefer | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: In the light of the recent resolution passed by the AMA, when will you start offering plans that include all transgender/transexual medical care up to and including surgery, instead of specifically excluding such care, as is usually done at present? |
| John Doyle | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? How is it possible for you to so completely extinguish your conscience and sense of decency and fairness and still function? People are on to you and want your industry either reformed or dismantled. This smoke and mirrors "listening tour" isn't going to cut it. It's the eleventh hour and you're still doing business as usual. This is your last chance and you're blowing it. You're actually putting yourselves out of business with your blind insatiable greed and callous disregard for the health and welfare of the American people. You deserve to be destroyed. Good riddance! |
| Dave Lindblom | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I have a very simple and direct question. Why should there be an additional level of cost and profit made by the insurance industry in the treatment and care of people's medical problems? |
| Chris Casper | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I believe it past time for you to remove yourselves from the healthcare equation. Your industry has been the direct cause of thousands of Americans losing their lives each year because of your poor decision making. Third party profit has no place in the decisions of life or death. It is immoral and should be illegal. The amounts of money you donate to politicians could be used for other things, including your shareholders. That said, the insurance industry makes huge amounts of money on everythng else that requires insurance. At what point does profit become just pure greed? When will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Gwyn Smith, R.N. | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: In 1992 I campaigned for a better health plan for all residents of my state,one that would be paid for and received by all. During this campaign we learned that the highest paid CEO received $76 million and the 10th in line received $5 million per year in salaries. I'm sure,16 years later, it is much higher. How can you justify such huge sums while keeping insurance rates out of reach of the ordinary person? |
| Robert Kaufman | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is my medical provider denied because it is "outside the network" even thought the provider is a major hospital in our area and is, indeed, in the insurance network? Had I not read the "fine" print I would have paid a bill that was not my responsibility. The forms, billings, and status documents must be more user friendly. How many of us pay sums that we do not owe because of stunts such as this? |
| Carla Lamarr | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Prevention SHOULD be the basis of health care. Keeping healthy with exercise, good diet and supplements can prevent many serious health problems. Those people with a healthy lifestyle should pay MUCH lower insurance rates, because they do not require expensive care. Alternative care for health problems should be covered by health insurance, if the people are paying for insurance. People should be allowed to choose the type of health care that works for them to keep healthy, and treats arthritis, and their other health problems. Natural cures work, and are much safer than most perscription drugs, so they should be covered for the person paying for health insurance. Health care should be a personal choice, not dictated by insurance and drug companies, whose main interest is profits, not health of the person. |
| Linda Rie | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am 58 years old. My husband is retired and on social security and medicare. I have saved up enough money to stop working in order to spend quality time with him (he is substantially older than I). However, I cannot buy affordable individual health insurance in the state of New York, where I live. In order to purchase private insurance, I would have to pay premiums of about $1,500 per month. The only people who can afford this are multimillionaires. When will you be making health insurance affordable to individual middle class Americans? I want to choose my doctor; that's all I ask; I don't think that's too much, because other than zillionaires should have the access to their doctors that they need. So, for the moment, I have no insurance. And that's the way it will stay unless you offer a plan that actually is affordable and provides REAL coverage. |
| Sue Cannon | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: We don't need more health insurance products. We Americans need the security of knowing that we will get the medical care we need when we need it. The thousands of health care insurance companies with their labyrinthine restrictions and protocols stymie actual care. It is estimated that $350 Billion/year could be saved by going to one system. These savings could then be used to cover those Americans who currently have no health care. How do you justify taking billions of dollars out of play that could be used to get Americans the health care they desperately need? |
| Michelle Ku | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Debra Holbrook | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Health
Insurnance Plans have become a huge scam. Maybe they work for other people,
but in the last two years it has become increasingly hard to even use the
plan for anything but checkups. The high deductible makes it impossible for
me to get even the simplest diagnostic tests. I am over 50 and not rich. I
have a family history of colon cancer. Not only can I not afford the
deductible, there is no coverage for this test. So, I am looking at no
preventive care and the high cost of dying of this disease if I get it. So,
insurance companies collect money and are giving less and less back. It's a
scam. The company I work for buys our health insurance for us. I am lucky
to have any insurance. But the high deductable makes it almost useless.
Something has to change. Corporate greed may kill me. If I became ill, I
would lose everything I own to the health-care system. At this age, this is
not a time for starting over. You can understand how angry it makes me that
you can hand out Viagra like candy, but you cannot give out birth control or
colonoscopies. It's fairly obvious who is running these companies and I, for
one am sick of it. It makes my doctor short with me too. She has 15 minutes
to see me. That's all she gets paid for it seems. So even my checkups are
unsatisfactory. Thank you for letting me get this off my mind for a little while and the oppurtunity tell you what is bothering me about all health care insurance plans. |
| Terri Weinstein | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: FIRST:Would you please release a full schedule, well in advance, of dates, locations and times of your listening tour? If you dont provide this information well in advance, aren't you insuring limited participation? SECOND: I'd like to know how you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? LAST BUT NOT LEAST: My health insurance has been with the same Company since I was born. Therefore, they know every health event in my life. I am a very healthy 61 year-old, yet they deny me a less expensive policy. I pay over $1000/month. An entire family of 4 doesn't pay that. I have never had a major claim. There can be no explanation for this except GREED. I don't think it is reasonable that the industry forces some people to pay exorbitant rates, and many more to not be able to afford health insurance at all. The entire health insurance industry should change their business model so that everyone pays the same affordable amount...more customers, lower premiums. If there was any care for your customers, you would approve many more preventative procedures, avoiding both the misery of the patient, and your high cost for treatment when illness is discovered later rather than sooner. |
| Susan Wright | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Why do the uninsured have to pay more for services (full price) than you charge insurance companies with their discounts (like BCBS)? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Harvey Sachs | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am very concerned that the Health Care Insurance Industry is too geared toward profit and not paying for the patient bills that it should. I know I am but one illness away from financial destruction and I am covered by health insurance. It is, IMO, unconscionable that your industry that this can happen to people with coverage. What is considered a reasonable profit in your industry? Would you ever consider changing your business model to put patient health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times so I might be involved? |
| Robert Paredes | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| James Gilliam | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: My goal is to get rid of all health insurance companies. They are profit mongers who literally kill thousands and thousands of people each year as they line their pockets with money. There can be no real health care in America until all of the health insurance companies are out of business. James Gilliam |
| Mark Anderson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: It has been well documented that paying for prevention of disabling conditions is much more cost effective than paying for treatment of these conditions once they occur. When will the insurance industry begin reimbursing their constituents for preventative health care instead of waiting for disabling conditions to occur? |
| Lan Wallin | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why don't you protect your clients by removing all restrictions on pre-existing conditions after 1 year if there are no claims for that condition? |
| Pani Crook | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I want to know how you justify skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is from health care bills, caused by your practice (and many other "health insurance plans") denying legitimate claims? My uncle is in and out of the hospital and has been due for surgery for months now. The doctor has approved the surgery and it is vital for my uncle's survival, yet the insurance company will not approve the surgery. Why you wait and dick around...my uncle teeters on the brink between life and death. So, I also want to ask if you'd consider changing your business model to actually put the HEALTH of PEOPLE before your company's profits? Thank you |
| Stephanie Haynes | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: While on vacation in Texas this past January, my 15 month old son had to go to the emergency room with a 105 fever and inconsolable crying. He was treated for an ear infection and released.We paid the $50 copay. My question is why did it take our insurance company (IBX) until the end of July to pay the bills in Texas? We received numerous letters and bills from the hospital and doctors. They even referred it to a collection agency. I called the insurance company a few times, each time to be reassured that they had paid the bill, when in fact they hadn't. If I did that with my mortgage I'd be out in the street. If I did that with my cell phone company, I'd be without service. Thank you. |
| Dr. Constance Buck | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Are you
kidding? Do you really believe that the american public is falling for your
ruse? Your absolute disregard for the public good is legendary, and NO ONE is
falling for your latest plan. How many people do you plan to bankrupt? How do
you sleep at night? "The bottom line" is about profit, not people.
Get a grip and wake up. Your profits are devastating to the public, and you
might consider placing people above profit. (I know, dream on). Dr, Constance Buck Santa Fe, New Mexico |
| Rael Nidess, M.D. | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Just want to let you know that your "business model" of 'standing in the doorway' taking people's money to allow (or not allow) them access to healthcare that their government should rightfully be providing as a human right's benefit (paid for, in full and more, by tax revenues) is unsustainable. I will not participate in it and I will do all I can to see it becomes an historical footnote to the demise of 'disaster capitalism'. That you utilize your subscribers premiums to lobby for laws that further deprive them of care and raise the cost of the care they get is evidence, in full, of your real agenda: Grow larger, provide larger & larger dividends to your investors, by limiting, more and more, your subscriber's access to care they've paid for. You disgust me. |
| Spencer Cunningham | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What kind of
system and country is it, when a husband and wife with 4 advanced degrees,
and both teaching (one part time) in mainstream american institutions, can't
afford basic health care? We support a single payer government administered national health care program like the civilized countries have! |
| shirley reese | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: America's ranking of healthcare as "37th in the World", puts us at a dangerously low level. With 50 million Americans UNinsured and 87 million UNDER-insured, how do you plan to affordably cover all Americans? ___________________________________ 2nd question With the Insurance industry's over use of "pre-existing conditions", how can you determine who has NO genetic health predispositions at all? Are they just people with money who have NO pre-existing health conditions? Then certainly that means that the "cure" for all disease and ailments IS MONEY? |
| pat Campbell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The pay for CEO's of the Insurance Giants are so high because this is a capitalist society, so we are told. That we should not whine about the high cost because this is a profit driven business. Ok, so please explain to us why it is the insurance industry is a CEO enrichment buisness rather than a business to provide health care for those who pay into it. Also, how much more care would be allowed to your subscribers if you cut out all the millions spent on lobbyist. It seems our money is going everywhere but to the subscribers. Also, do you indulge in eugenics when it comes to those who are allowed to use insurance? Those with disabilities should be deprived of health care and die from their disabilities early to cut the cost of health care and increase your profits? |
| Thomas Carson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I had a prescription that would have cost $660.00. I could not afford it!! Then I went online and found a pharmacy in Canada that sold me the exact same drug for $46.00. The differnce was over $500.00. They were very polite. They called me and my doctor. They called to follow up and let me know that the prescription was on it's way. all for $46.... Please explain why. |
| Robert Stiefel | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is the rate of infant mortality in the United States higher than in other developed nations? Why is the life expectency of American citizens lower than in other developed nations? And why has it gone down in this country? The other countries, by the way, have national healthcare programs for all citizens; it would seem that we alone have turned healthcare into a business for profit. My wife and I can pay our medical bills at present because of an unusual combination of pensions and salaries, but insurance costs plus co-pays amount to our single greatest annual expense - greater than our mortgage or utilities costs and certainly far greater than the cost of food and clothing. When will you make the health of all the people a higher priority than profits for those who can afford to buy stock in your companies? When will you cease, along with the rest of corporate America, to use our money to pay your high ranking executive salaries far out of proportion to exceutive salaries in other countries? And bye the bye, you might try eliminating spending our money on advertisements. Or do you consider healthcare to be a marketing equivalent to beer or automobiles? Please don't keep on telling us that you are putting your money into research for our sake. We know better than that. |
| John Cooper | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Dottie Galinski | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why do you have to charge such a high price for medical Insurance? |
| Kathleen McCarthy | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Michael Horstman | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| marjorie keyishian | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I wonder if your business could put health before profits. Clearly non-profit is the one way we can care for all. Can you find a way to cut costs any other way? Infuriating to find tha using accepted doctors does not work since the anestheist is often not part of your plan/ Clearly I could not have picked one of yours at that point. That's just one example of the profit in action. Yours Sadly but truly, M. keyishian |
| Joel Huberman | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What is the top priority of the health insurance industry? Is it making a profit to provide compensation for executives and dividends and rising stock prices for investors? Or is it helping Americans achieve good health? If it's the latter, how do you justify the practice of denying claims? Sincerely yours, Joel Huberman |
| John DeSantis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Based on the below questions, and my above subject heading, please do the right thing for every single American concerning health care. John DeSantis http://www.PublicAndPrivateEnterprise.org ------- # How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? # Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? # Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Ian Le | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Janice Layne | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you
explain all your profits but still insurance increases on every turn. How do
you expect the working class to afford insurance? I make less than $21,000 a
year, support my son. We are not on any government assistance because I make
too much money and own my car. Insurance is too expensive so when we are
sick, it is to the emergency room because I do not have to pay in advance. If
people going to the ER is your excuse, you need to take the blame for it, because
we would not go there if we could afford your insurance. All this profit you
make...where is it going? To the CEO's of your companies? It is time you put
people's health before your profits and release the full schedule of your
listening tour, including dates, locations and times. I am for National Health Care solely because of big profit insurance companies. |
| Peter Wegele | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Thank you so much for making me choose between paying basic living costs and health insurance for most of my adult life, decades after most other countries offer free or low-cost medical care to their citizens. Medical care should be as free as the air we breathe, but insurance company CEOs have lavish lifestyles to maintain and I understand that's more important than my situation. As of right now half of my monthly paycheck is going toward health insurance. Every month is a financial struggle and the premium I pay is, as I said, ridiculously high. I understand that insurance companies, like all companies, are in business to make a profit. But somewhere along the line something went extremely wrong, ethically. There is simply no reason you cannot make premiums affordable and still turn a very a good profit. Sincerely, Peter A. Wegele Saugerties, NY |
| Sue Lowery | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How can we make you reform your system to reward good health practices? To not cover preventive measures such as bone scans but pay for much more expensive outcomes of broken pelvises? To punish subscriber for having suspicious mole checked and then even when it turns out to be nothing subscriber is informed it will no longer cover anything related to skin for the rest of the life of the subscriber? To fire all your lobbyists so the Big Blue Gorilla in our state doesn't keep us from getting competitive prices and quotes? |
| jim bier | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How does delivery of health care through for-profit insurance escape the conflict inherent in the fact that fundamentally the insurance industry makes more money if they are able to charge more for premiums and deny access to care. the insurance industry, at the level of the individual decisions it makes, makes more money if it can deny care for a health problem, and it makes more money if it can refuse to enroll and unenroll those who have health care needs. |
| William Sowa | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I want a government run health care plan that covers all Americans and includes the ability to negotiate prices with drug companies. The health insurance companies serve no useful purpose other than the excessive remuneration to the chief executives. This is the only sensible thing that should take place is that the government run health care plans exist. |
| Tom Garneau | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Thanks, tom |
| Jackie Johnson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| Kathy Mullins | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Health care should be a basic human right, not a profit or greed based business! I am disgusted by private health insurance and look forward to the day that the US finally wakes up and adopts a Canadian style health care system. I think paying a CEO a billion dollars a year while denying people needed care is an abomination and justification enough to close down the private insurance industry for good and to provide REAL health care for ALL Americans that does not include risking medical bankruptcy or denied care in the name of corporate greed! |
| Hillary Sobel | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: We keep hearing that lawsuits against doctors result in skyrocketing insurance premiums to them which results in downstream increased costs to patients. Why not price malpractice insurance premiums the same way automobile insurers price their policies-- based on the conduct of the insured? That way, bad doctors will pay more, good doctors won't, and their costs won't be passed onto patients and other insurance companies. Seems logical doesn't it? So why not try it? |
| Kenneth Brown | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Health care in the USA just doesn't work right. Please answer the following questions. 1. For the life of me, I can't figure out why anyone other than actual health care providers should should make any money on the provision of health care. Can you explain to me why insurance companies should be allowed to make money on health care delivery, where their right to do so came from, and why it is beneficial to americans to pay an extra 30 cents out of every health care dollar to insurance companies? 2. It always seemed to me that a properly functioning health care system would provide care for people who are sick. What possible difference could it make whether a person is sick from a new disease or from a recurrance of a previously existing condition? Except to the bottom line of the insurnace industry, that is. 3. Why should americans put up with a heath care system where prudence and acceptability of a treatment is determined by an insurance company official rather than a doctor? 4. Why should americans pay more for prescrition drugs than people on any other nation on earth? 5. When are "we the people" going to wake up and realize that greedy insurance companies are responsible for the health care mess in this country and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT? |
| Judith Rosen | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? Sincerely, Judith Rosen |
| kay haas | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am a permanently disabled ex-school teacher who has to rely on disability income from the SSA and from my state's retirement system. I pay extremely high premiums for Medicare A and B coverage, and my state forced all retirees who wished to have prescription through its plan to choose the one plan the state sanctioned. My RX costs exceed $1,000.00 per month and when I quickly reach the "donut hole" I have to pay the total cost of each prescription. Several of the prescriptions I must take do not have generic equivalents or are not on the formulary of the plan under which I am covered. Questions: What is going to happen to the Plan D prescription coverage, Why are my medicare premiums so costly, Why is the cost of my prescriptions increasing at such a phenominal rate, while my SS disability income and my state retirement income has not increased in the past two years? |
| Brian Kie Weissbuch | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you suggest providing coverage for patients who are either unable to afford your insurance products, or those unable to qualify for commercially available insurance coverage due to prior health history? How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Frederic Gibbs | It is my understanding that about a third of the health care dollar in the U.S. goes to the support of the medical insurance industry. How can you justify this? |
| Beth Wells | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I don't understand how the insurance companies can justify their huge profits in light of the fact that young people just starting out in the workplace cannot afford any health insurance. This lack of coverage will cause a further crisis in the emergency rooms of hospitals when these people cannot get care any other way. We should be encouraging people to stay well instead of paying when these people become to ill to function. We need insurance for everyone that can be available on a sliding scale based on peoeple's ability to pay. Healthcare should not be only about profits for shareholders; it should be about what is best for the country. |
| Anthony Capobianco | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? Yours truly, Anthony A Capobianco |
| Brian Lee Sebastian | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: With seeming big profit motivation at the core of America's Health Insurance Plans, and paid Washington lobbyists courting legislation that propogates profit over affordable health care for ALL Americans in our country - the U.S.A., still one of the resource-richest in the world, - would you please consider, for the sake of ALL Americans, changing your business model to put peopleís health before, or at least equal to, your profits? And secondly, will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? - so that ALL Americans voices can be heard, regarding the most important of issues facing all Americans today: affordable health care for ALL. Thank you for your time, Brian Lee Sebastian Austin and Houston, TX. U.S.A. |
| Christine Pasmore | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is it that increasing profit has become more important than peoples' lives? When did money become more important than people? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits |
| R. Dale | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Kurt Fisher | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is the U.S. behind most other industrialized "First World" countries with respect to universal health care? Isn't health care a right, not merely a privilege, that only the wealthy can cross off their worry list? |
| Nancy Kurtz | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How is it moral, ethical or a good business model to have skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills. We have to buy our own insurance and pay more than half our income to buy insurance. We are in a damned if you do and damned if you don't position. Both of us in our mid 50's we cannot take chances and go without insurance. Would you consider changing your business model to put your clients health before your profits. If you look at studies about how a consumer choses which store or product to be loyal to, it always comes down to service. It would behoove you to strive for ways to beckon loyalty now rather than later. Besides it being the right thing to do it is also the smart business decision. At some point, we are going to have a realistic choice in insurance options and the uncaring selfish ones will not be in the choice pool. Please release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations and times. Give us a chance to prepare for your visit with intelligent questions with research available. You have the opportunity to prepare give us the same consideration. Thank you for listening, Nancy B. Kurtz |
| S.J. C | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? |
| bill hay | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Is health care a human right - like free speech and free practice of religion? Or is it a commodity like a car? |
| Fred Sokolow | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why should the people's health be a for-profit industry? Isn't that barbaric? Why shouldn't US citizens enjoy the same single-payer, non-insurance company based system all other civilized peoples in other countries enjoy? |
| Richard Kramer | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Universal, single-payer health coverage is the only fair and just program for all of us in the U.S. When will you decide to follow the highly successful lead of so many modern societies in the world that have adopted and followed this practice in their countries? This is not socialized medicine in spite of that lame excuse to kill the debate before it even starts. |
| Joan Wienbrauck | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The best plan for America's health care "industry" would be to eliminate it in its entirety--every insurance connection ever conceived or implemented into the health care of Americans. It is fitting that the term "industry" is used in a system that has been overtaken by "free market" economic interests whose concern is the welfare of share holders and inflated annual pay/bonuses/and other CEO perquisites. That is precisely what it is, an INDUSTRY. The PRODUCT is the shambles of the medical care of Americans. Unless of course they are in a position to legislate their own + their cohorts plan--paid for by the taxes that squeeze middle and lower incomes off the field. |
| Graham Garcia | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Past history has shown that an essentially unregulated health insurance industry will not work. My question is: can the health insurance industry accept some level of reasonable government regulation? In the long run, if all we hear is that the current system of self-regulation is best, then our health care will suffer and ultimately, the health care industry will be forced to make radical changes. |
| Don Brake | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industry's skyrocketing profits when the #1 cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put people's health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Beverly Welber | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I had to drop insurance when my premiums (two adults) reached $2,000 per month, with a $2,500 deductible (each) and a 70/30 split. We have no serious health conditions (no cancer, diabetes, heart disease) yet are turned down for medically underwritten insurance and cannot therefore have a medical savings account. The insurance companies grow richer, and average people slip into underinsurance or non-insurance. What do you plan to do to provide insurance for people who need it instead of screening most people out, denying needed coverage to policy holders, and charging outrageous amounts? |
| David Middleton | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible has bankrupted many Americans and is sapping the vitality of the economy. Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Would you also release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times so that a real gauging of American opinion can be made? thank you. |
| Lisa Annelouise Rentz | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I would like to know how you justify the nature of our current system. Specifically- - why do you divide up coverage of the human body (for example, dental is usually separate from medical coverage) when in fact, the human body is one contiguous and inter-depent system. - how do you rationalize "pre-existing conditions" when people are born with much of what's going to happen-- genetics, etc.? My point is that the current version of health care that you represent is toxic, and in more ways than listed here, unfortunately. So my main question is, how are you going to ensure that everybody in the US gets high-quality health care 100% of the time? yours in transparency and honesty- Lisa Annelouise Rentz Beaufort SC |
| Gilian Franks | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: There are many issues with pricing in health care that need addressing. Why is it that because I have insurance my price is different that someone who doesn't? Why can't I get a an estimate on costs before I commit to services? Why is there no "standard" cost to compare an institution or parctise by? And why, when I submit my insurance is the provider not paid promptly? Sometimes it is as long as 90 days for an authorized service! I'd very much like to listen to a forum that is addressing these questions and others, when will there be one in Vermont, or failing that what are the dates of a New England event? Sincerely, Gillian Franks |
| Norita Bodie | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans Here's a good one for you: My Doctor prescribed a dosage of 15ml. and the medicine comes in either 10ml or 20ml. So she prescribed 45 10ml. pills and I was to take 1 1/2 pills. Well guess what? The insurance company only allows 30 pills and only every 30 days. I called the insurance company and asked them how they could override my Doctor. They couldn't answer me. And my doctor has to call the prescription overseer or some such thing. Oh yeah, we need to revamp the whole system. I'm all for Universal Health Care. This country needs to catch up to the rest of the industrialized countries. You know get into the 21st century! |
| Gary Henrie | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? How do you plan to stay in business as the cost of Health Insurance rockets out of reach for almost everyone who works for a living? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Britt Pearson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: We need to get health care for everybody in this country and to refuse health care to anybody should be totally illegal. If we can carry out a war, we can certainly afford health care. It's a disgrace that this country doesn't have universal health care. It should be our priority. |
| Linda Day | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Healthcare in America is broken today, and largely as a result of the insurance industry. Doctors and other providers are paid pitiful sums, and only after dealing with overwhelming paperwork. Americans are paying enormous premiums for little coverage -- before Medicare, I was paying $500/month for a plan that did not cover an annual well-woman exam or any lab tests whatsoever. Meanwhile, the insurance company executives are multi-millionaires. The best solution would be nationalized health, doing away with insurance companies altogether. Second best would be a well-thought out plan to ration care so that overall it becomes affordable, and have this implemented through a government program. Medicare is great, it works, and all American healthcare should be modeled on this plan. |
| Paula Levy | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans:Profits are
fine in the area of "products". But living or dying, or living
severly impaired for lack of funds to pay for healthcare is not a
"product" no matter what word you use for your insurance
policies. Your profits cause the deaths of people. That's right, they KILL PEOPLE! People die; they live lives with horrible conditions; they live in pain, and in trying to save themselves and preserve a higher quality of life, they bankrupt themselves, their families, and their children. Where is your humanity? How can YOU live with your blindness to human suffering? Lower you profits and let people live! What is the full schedule of your listening tour? Paula Levy |
| Jenni Roberts | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am delighted to hear that the insurance industry is finally interested in listening to the people which it serves. Our health care industry is in crisis, yet the industry is recording huge profits. This is due in no small part to the ability to deny claims. Navigating the health care system is difficult for health professionals. I can't imagine how it would feel to be a consumer without a good deal of knowledge regarding the system. I believe this is the largest group of consumers, and they can be intimidated by a system which denies coverage without a reasonable explanation (recording a number on the statement without any corresponding information is not a reasonable explanation). In addition, to contact an insurance provider frequently involves a number of phone tree options followed by a wait on hold for extended periods of time. If a member of management arrived/called any other place of business and was treated in that manner, I don't believe he/she would appreciate being on the other end of such policies. Please consider changing your business model to put people's health before your profits. I would be interested to learn the full schedule of this listening tour, including dates, locations, and times to discuss this further. Thank-you. Jenni Roberts |
| Eric Rosenquist | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I'm wondering why you systematically deny people who have pre-existing conditions such as diabetes or cancer. I realize that the insurance industry is a profit driven market, but don't you think there are some values that are more important than greed, such as human life? Also, why have your costs skyrocketed so much even while the top executives within the health care industry receive millions of dollars in compensation each year? |
| Gwyn Smith, R.N. | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: A PERSON'S HEALTH IS NOT A COMMODITY! The United States ranks very low on the list of satisfactory health care all the while paying the highest in costs. WHY? |
| Valli Geiger | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Given that America is paying collectively more per person on health care with worse outcomes than any other industrialized country, given that the insurance industry is now predominately for profit, given that it covers fewer and fewer people with higher copays and deductibles, finds reasons to deny coverage based on prior conditions, makes smaller and smaller pools of consumers to determine risk with subsequent cherry picking and out of reach individual premiums for the majority of Americans, long delays in payments to providers, and a focus on specialty care and a starving of primary care for resources: what does the for profit insurance industry bring to the health care reform table in terms of public good? |
| Alex Henderson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I have many business contacts in Europe who have what the American health insurance industry would call "pre-existing conditions" (for example, a history of heart disease or diabetes). They are fully covered under the government-operated health care plans in their countries (such as Italy, France and Spain), but if they moved to this country, they would be rejected by health insurance companies. Thus, I advise these people to remain in their countries and NEVER move to the United States under any circumstances. Doing so would endanger their lives. What can be done to rectify this tragic and appalling situation? |
| Dawn Gauthier | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: it's been shown that private insurance companies' administrative costs are on average TWICE as much as equivalent administrative costs of CMS. If private business is allegedly so much more efficient than the government, how do you explain this huge discrepancy? |
| Donna Stillo | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Donna Stillo |
| Henry W. Weis | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: You generally refuse to cover the cost of femeale birth control measures while you generally contribute to the use of stimulants for male ability to impregnate women. I recognize that this is done to seek the favor of some people whose "religious" preferences are to subjugate women to men. That is not a proper concern of the insurance industry. Henry W. Weis |
| Judy Dombrowski | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What kind of system allows the sickest among us to go uninsured? Do you realize how an increase of ill Americans affects the entire country? How do you intend to address this paradox? Will you be publishing your schedule of events? I would love to attend. Thanks! |
| Judith Lachat | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Within the past few years, I have had an increasingly strong feeling that America's health care system (or lack thereof) is going to be the death of me. I become even more terrified when I realize that it's not just me, but everyone I know, and millions that I don't know. The kicker is that I'm only 27 years old, have one of the best health care plans, and don't even have any major life-threatening disease...yet. I have some treatment-resistant conditions where I have exhausted almost every option of aid with little results, and my conditions are only worsening due to the amount of stress I carry with never-ending healthcare bills and the fear that because of America's healthcare system, I have almost no hope for a future that I work hard enough to deserve. I literally feel as though America's healthcare system will be the death of me, and health is something no American, or any human being, should have to worry about not being able to afford to keep. What I want to know is, how do you justify your industry's skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put people's health before your profits? If not, I would like a detailed explanation as to why you believe your welfare is more important than the health and wellbeing of every human in this country. And lastly, considering your decisions in this matter, what outcome to you predict for yourself when we reach the final judgement day? |
| Richard V. Cogan | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? Thank you for answering these very pertinent questions. Richard V. Cogan |
| Paul Milazzo | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will you go on record now and state that your Industry is in favor of Federal Legislation insuring that if a person or family has a valid health insurance policy that they will not be denied complete coverage for care which is deemed medically necessary by qualified health care providers? Many claims as we all know have been unfairly denied payment as has been widely reported in the press. Furthermore will you also commit to support Federal Legislation doing away with any and all denials of claims payments based on pre existiing conditions? |
| Robert Reed | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is it that insurance premiums continue to rise and benefits continue to shrink when the insurance industry is making record profits? |
| Diana Halperin | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why is your industry's policy to deny so many legitimate claims? -- Would you consider funneling business profits into a national single payer insurance plan that would benefit all people and not just a few employees and corporate shareholders? |
| Bill Osincup | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I can hardly afford my premiums anymore. I am really starting to resent the way insurance companies do not seem to want to help under any situation unless they make money on it. You are making a fortune standing between me an my health. I want to go to the listening tour. When will you be in the Seattle Washington Area? |
| Gerald Knox | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you measure the quality of the plans you sell? What are the consequences of not achieving that minimum quality? |
| Patricia Murrin | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I have a couple of questions I would like answered: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Erin Harris | Your shameful overpayment of executives and tireless
efforts to deny people coverage and due payment of claims have done
incalculable damage to the people whom you claim to serve. It's disgusting enough when your greed deprives people of proper compensation for their homes and other possessions -- but, when it results in physical suffering and even death, the situation is no longer to be borne. Americans need health CARE, not health insurance, and we can far better afford care with insurance companies OUT of the picture. You're simply raping the system for excessive profit. |
| PA Martin | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Your industry has skyrocketing profits as a result of denying as many claims as possible and continuing to raise rates which makes insurance out of reach for many. How is this justified? |
| Marc Woersching | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why are you so opposed to a Canadian or European style national health care system? Under our current miserable system, whether an American has health care depends on whether their employers are willing and able to provide them with health insurance. Those who work for businesses that do not provide insurance are then thrown into the private insurance market. As we all know, whether one can obtain barely affordable coverage depends on whether one has a pre-existing condition. If an American has any of a vast number of pre-existing conditions, they either cannot obtain private health care insurance or the premiums are astronomically high. This is because your industry naturally only wants to insure young, healthy people. Thus, approximately 47 million Americans lack health insurance and end up in county hospital emergency rooms, an expense that is shifted onto the public. Finally I am deeply offended that your industry's smear campaign against President Clinton's attempt at moderate healthcare reform in 92-93, the "Harry and Louise" ads which contributed greatly to the defeat of the Clinton plan by a supine Congress and a confused American public. Shame on you! |
| mary mikesell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: you appear to want americans to participate in preventative testing to discover diseases at an early stage - i do not know what world you live in but i am 58 years old and in order for me to buy the medicine i am required to take on a monthly basis, something else is put on hold - how in the world am i supposed to afford to have a colonoscopy or mammogram when I KNOW you barely cover the minimum on those - and why did my asthma copay go down and then back up if you are not more concerned with profits rather than the health of americans- |
| Roderick Salisbury | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: It is becoming increasingly difficult for many American citizens to afford health care, yet the insurance industry continues to make enormous profits. At the same time, there is a severe shortage of new doctors. Would you consider changing your business model so that all Americans can afford health care, even if it reduces your profits? If not, what do you feel is your ethical responsibility towards both health care providers and the citizenry? Thank you in advance for addressing these concerns. Sincerely, Roderick |
| M. Hart | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: As you know, Health Insurance is a serious and distressing topic for millions of Americans. I would like to know what actions the industry is taking to make the general health of the American Public the priority, to reduce the financial burden on individuals and on the government as our population continues to grow -- will the industry make preventative care a priority? Will people's health, not profit margins, be the priority? Sincerely, M. Hart |
| Deborah Glenn | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: As a person that has cared for and watched a person die for lack of Insurance and now recently finding myself briefly in that similar circumstance, I must insist that this system is far more 'broken' than I think any of you realize. There is a whole population of people that goes missing from the statistics. The uninsured that know they have too much to qualify for free care, are to sick & busy trying to find a way to feed their children to investigate the complicated maze of programs that may lead to care and those that are so proud they end up dying before they access any form of public assisted medical care. I know you must think that if an intelligent person knows that they are ill and needs medical treatment, they will find a way. Believe me. Even with the internet at one's fingertips it is near impossible and it is easy to see how one's condition can progress to the point of no return before being able to find affordable help. Our current system has ethical defects and needs to change. Please release the full schedule of your 'listening tour', including dates, locations and times. Kindest regards, D. Glenn |
| sidney ramsden scott | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The fact that you are a for-profit industry is a disgrace! It is immoral and unethical for the insurance industry to make money off of denying medical assistance to sick people or causing bankruptcy by upping your premiums. If either of my children brought home a person working for a medical insurance company, I would forbid them to marry that person. You guys are going to go down in history as bad guys- comparable to slave owners and sweatshop operators who exploited child laborers. Know that the majority of Americans despise your industry and regard you as villains.So change! |
| Ken O'Connell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? A concerned veteran. Thank you, Ken O'Connell |
| John Spear | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am a 61
year old self-employed professional with substantial income and investments
and in good health--but I am still outraged at having to pay TWICE the market
premiums for individual plans because my ONLY coverage option is through the
Texas Health Insurance Risk Pool--where I pay $749/month for a $5,000
deductible policy! WHY are you allowed to cherrypick only the youngest and healthiest consumers--and reject all others? WHY are all of your individual policies so outrageously high? WHY do you rate consumers up, or reject them entirely, for medical conditions that went away YEARS ago? I CANNOT WAIT FOR THE DAY WE FINALLY ADOPT UNIVERSAL SINGLE-PAYER NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE! |
| Patricia Peters | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industry's huge profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible?? Are you considering changing your business model to put people's health before your profits? |
| Sarah Jacobson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: What would you suggest for those of us who cannot obtain health insurance due to pre-existing conditions or health problems? I've applied to numerous different companies, and have been rejected by all of them.I'm on a waiting list for the state's high risk pool. My monthly disability payment puts me above the level where I could qualify for Medi-Cal, (joke, because even if I can get high-risk coverage, it will cost half of what my monthly disablity payment is) So,if you are listening, what would you suggest I do? I scrape together the money for medications each month, see my doctor every three months, but cannot afford the blood tests, MRI, or other screenings that I should be having, because I lack the resources. I worked and was covered under a group plan for 30 years, until I got sick, then found that I was not only on my own, but I was charged higher rates than I was when I was covered. What are your ideas for solutions? |
| Anne Snouck-Hurgronje | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will you work to close the loopholes that allow the uninsured or underinsured become bankrupt by a catastrophic illness? |
| Ardeth L. Weed | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Equal Health Care Access for All Americans! Do you agree that is what citizens of a first world country deserve? Will you work with the new administration to accomplish this goal? Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? Sincerely, Ardeth L. Weed |
| Carol Reingold | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am a self-employed entrepreneur. I have had health plans on my own for the last 20 years. Not only have the prices of the plans risen about 150%, but the deductables on those plans have risen from $250 to $1500. How do you reconcile this with your rising profits? Carol Reingold |
| Marilyn Whitesides | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How can you justify making such enormous financial profits when so many people cannot afford health care even when facing death? |
| Marie Santiago | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I would like to know why when so many people are filing for bankruptcy, and losing their homes because of your company not paying legitimate medical claims and denying people based on preexisting conditions you still manage to make a very hefty profit? Please release your full schedule of listening tour including dates, locations, and times to allow people to attend and ask you these questions in person. Thank you, yours sincerely, Marie A Santiago, New Haven, CT |
| Barbara Carlton | Dear Health Insurance Plans: As a health care provider and consumer, I am constantly reminded what a crisis health care has become. I urge you to consider your role in the escalating costs to consumers and continuing issues that providers face when filing claims (ie unsubstantiated rejections, miscalculations, delays in payment, fees that have been constant since the mid 90s, etc) Respectfully yours, Barbara W. Carlton |
| Sarah Lifton | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Given that America's health care model is broken beyond repair, pricing average, hardworking people out of the market and dragging companies that provide employee coverage down a bottomless pit that is affecting American competitiveness in the global marketplace, how can you justify insurance companies' place as middleman/gatekeeper/ naysayer in the health care equation? How do you feel your business model is preferable to single-payer, universal coverage, when 45 million people currently have no health coverage at all? How can you justify your record profits when people are declaring bankruptcy because you regularly deny as many legitimate claims as possible, let alone rescind policies purchased in good faith? How can you claim to be in the business of promoting health when your first priority is really returning a profit to your shareholders? |
| James Kendall | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| William Stockwell | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Carol Wasson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? Why do you consistently raise my premiums when I have never made a claim? Why is your underwriting for me to get insurance such a difficult process, when I have never had a claim? Will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times? |
| Dorothy Caylor-Griffiths | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider actually covering procedures which are recommended as necessary by health providers who are "in network" (instead of creating layers of eligibility restrictions/requirements)? May we have a more widely published schedule of your Listening Tour? It is difficult to locate this service. |
| Dianne Bragg | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Will you please release your full tour schedule, including dates, locations & times? How can you listen if people don't know where or when? |
| Dave Benson | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I honestly can't talk to you people without becoming outraged over your abuse of the healthcare industry. If you spent the money you use to lobby on healthcare we might actually start to come close to taking care of all Americans. How is that we, one of the wealthiest countries, don't have national comprehensive health coverage for every American? Why is it efforts at developing national comprehensive health coverage are derailed by private industry interests, such as yours? It makes me angry to see the health insurance industry make obscene profits at the expense of Americans paying your outrageous premiums. How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? I would ask you to consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits but I know that won't happen -- it takes a soul to place others well-being before your own pocketbook, and we all know the insurance industry lacks a soul. But how about this: are you willing to really listen to America, or are you more interested in producing a dog and pony show; will you release the full schedule of your listening tour, including dates, locations, and times so that the real American public can attend instead of your hand-picked puppets fawning over you deceit? |
| Dale White | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am currently in college and have health insurance through my parents. Though my mother has battled various forms of cancer and my father has been diagnosed with MS, I am fit and healthy. Is there any reason for me to expect difficulty in getting personal health care coverage for myself in the future? On a related note, are higher premiums and co-pays for my family (or any family) justified considering the high profit margin health insurance companies are currently receiving? My family has high medical costs and gets by from paycheck to paycheck and I know that there are many families that are not faring as well as mine (not that I would consider our position "well.") Provided that there are profits, shouldn't a health insurance company's primary concern be to ensure that their clients get the health care they need? If people are forced to lose coverage because of rising costs, won't those costs come back to the health insurance industry anyway when the are billed by the hospitals that have to foot the bill for expensive emergency room procedures that could have been avoided if affordable coverage had been available for the patients? Thank you for your time and consideration. |
| Richard Toronto | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How many lobbyists does the health care industry maintain in Washington, and how much money does it contribute to our elected officials? |
| david gharagozlou | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: The quality of government is in the United Stated miserable comparing with Europeís advanced countries. Which reasons do you have to hinder us administration to adapt European health system? How do you justify your industryís skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Marilyn Sandon | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Would you consider changing your business model to put peopleís health before your profits? People are going with out medications because the prices are way too high. |
| Elene Gusch | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I'm a practitioner, and I would like to be a provider for all the HMOs and PPOs in my area. Only one of them has an open network; the others have accepted only a few providers and shut all the rest of us out. This hurts both patients and doctors. Why do you operate this way? The insurer with the open network is doing at least as well financially as the others. |
| Jeri Callahan | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: I am so grateful that here in Seattle we have Group Health! The costs are so much less than in your industry where those selling the largest amount of policies are rewarded with a vacation in Hawaii or some equivalent. I had a cousin who sold insurance in Indianapolis and they could afford extragant week-ends to football games, etc. and a maid for their four children. At one point I worked temporarily for an Insurance Company and was appalled at the high pay scale and general leisurelyness of most of the employees. I'd be interested in knowing the time, date, and location of your "listening tour" in Seattle. |
| Thomas Devers | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: When will health insurance companies put people's health first above their profits? |
| Adrienne Hochberg | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: With your expertise in the healthcare field, it seems logical that we turn to you at this time to come up with a health plan that will cover all Americans. No one is saying people shouldn't pay for the plan, but it should be affordable. I believe you are the ones with the answers.Please help Americans. |
| john Kramarczyk | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Please provide America with a widely disseminated and easily accessed annual report from each of the top ten healthcare insurance companies. An annual report that replicates the line items found in a typical Fortune 500 private company's report Thank you, john |
| Lee Walther | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: By fighting to keep the status quo of putting your profits before peoples health and lives, you are systematically helping to kill off the poor and the elderly. This is like a legal genocide. This Universal Greed, Apathy and Ignorance must stop. We are all part of the whole, we are all connected. Everything we do affects us all for the good or for the worse. You are part of creating and recreating our world, as we all are. Every day you are making a conscious choice to come from darkness or light. What kind of humanity and world are you creating? I am asking you to make and BE the change for the good of ALL. I am also asking you cancel your "listening (propaganda)_ tours". You know what the 'Truth' is. I am asking you to live that truth. You truly don't "Need" what you "Want" which is more, more, more. You have everything that you need including the luxury of good health=good life which we all are entitled to - especially those you 'insure" to have. Lee Walther |
| Jacob Diamond | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Why does it make sense for insurance companies to decide what's "medically necessary", rather than doctors who have gone to years of school and have years of training, and have seen and examined the patient in person adequately? Surely there must be an efficient way to "weed out" bogus claims and unethical doctors... |
| Mandy Swartzendruber | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How do you justify the health care industry's skyrocketing profits when the number one cause of bankruptcy in America is health care bills, caused by your practice of denying as many legitimate claims as possible? |
| Annette Rondano | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: Doubling premiums and delivering crap health care has been your for-profit policy since the 1990's. It is my hope that our country will adopt single-payer, tax-payer driven and administered health care. I fully expect that your CEO's and administrators will rot in hell for the pain you cause so many of the neediest Americans. In the mean time, I wish you poor health so that you can witness first hand the lousy system you have created over the last 20 years. "Listening schedule?" Right. I'll believe you are listening when your CEO's are paid the same wage as the sales reps that market your crap. |
| vicky crampton | Dear America's Health Insurance Plans: How to you justify your profits when middle America is suffering and barely able to afford your premiums? I can only afford catastrophic insurance with huge deductible,and I have never been sick in my life. My husband,before he turned 65 and finally got Medicare,was denied coverage for a hernia operation he had 25 years before! You are dealing with people's lives here. |