The June issue has historically offered a perspective and focus on health insurance, and related ancillary products, for several reasons, not least among them the annual meeting of the National Association of Health Underwriters. Broker World has supported the efforts of NAHU and their intrepid membership for the majority of our existence and will continue to do so. Many of my earliest and best friendships were forged on the health insurance side of the business and furthered by involvement with the Brokers Health Insurance Network, Inc. (BHINI) and the National Association of Insurance Marketers (NAIM). But today there aren’t nearly enough health insurance companies able to advertise nationally (or willing to write) to allow a Health Insurance issue.
I remember the prosperity of the MET days and have watched as, little by little, these friends either evolved or got out of the business. I remember with glee the triumph of our industry over Hillarycare (and I’m still tickled she failed), ignorant in that moment of the eventual malignancy of state by state legislation that would eviscerate health insurers’ ability to offer affordable nationwide coverage or even its semblance, fuel industry-wide rate increases and erode, state by state, consumers’ confidence in and general acceptance of the health insurance industry. It took twenty years, but eventually spawned Obamacare.
And now the health insurance landscape is once again less certain—due to the malicious legislative efforts of the conservative majority to rob the past POTUS of his legacy of having masterminded the most undeniably brilliant and glorious act of compassionate achievement in the history of our great nation and, in the process, sadistically deprive hundreds of millions of Americans of their God-given right to easily affordable healthcare at the expense of the robber barons of the health insurance industry.
Ain’t the mainstream media great? Even my local Fox affiliate, in coverage of town hall meetings with any conservative legislator, airs, predominantly, the angry voices of the uninformed and portrays them as prescient crusaders for the overwhelming majority of actual and potential (and imaginary) health care consumers. Seldom, though I strain my ears, have I heard the faintest whispers of surprisingly high double- or even triple-digit rate increases within exchanges—almost like that sound you thought you heard but couldn’t quite be sure… Nowhere (outside of industry outlets) has the suggestion of unfulfilled government commitments to insurers been examined or reported. News of insurers exiting exchanges is subtly shaded to imply a lack of concern for consumers as much as, if not more than, any failing of the system. Any rational explanation of the necessary principles involved in effectively spreading risk, if even aired, seem to be smirkingly dismissed as the nonsensical prattling of a child’s made up language until the ultimate blasphemy is uttered—profit!—and then righteous indignation reigns. National deficit concerns are at worst temporary annoyances until adjustments can be made to justifiably make some or all one percenters foot the bill.
I remember the one shining moment of my direct encounter with the Occupy movement—that of a pair of colorfully coiffed teenty-somethings exiting an Escalade and armpitting their protest signs to text their downtrodden comrades from their iPhones. But I digress.
I commend those legislators fiscally aware enough to recognize the need to replace Obamacare and stalwart enough to trudge that media-demonized path. There are easily defensible compassionate reasons to retain the rationally humane parts of the current legislation including, specifically, the prohibition of denying, discriminating against or charging higher rates to any individual on the basis of preexisting conditions. But it’s ridiculously obtuse for legislators, and to an equal extent the media if not the general public, to enthusiastically embrace crowdfunding/GoFundMe pages as Nobel-worthy epiphanies and deliberately avoid any meaningful examination of managing risk and actuarial science.
And nowhere in any discussion is allowed the politically incorrect concern for ethical insurance professionals whose livelihoods have been disrupted, though they span all ethnic groups and number in the hundreds of thousands. I applaud each of you who continues to help your clients navigate the labyrinth of the geometrically oxymoronic Affordable Care Act (for a fraction of reasonable compensation) and who continue to provide value through ancillary products and cross-marketing of disability income, long term care protection and other insurance products both in and not-yet-in the crosshairs of those intent on bloatedly mandating further “consumer protection.”
As an American, an employer still somehow offering private insurance to his employees (thank you UnitedHealthcare), a healthcare consumer, an enthusiastic believer in the societal blessing our industry offers to consumers, and a proud political conservative—dammit, Republican!—I pray that Repeal and Replace considers actuarial science and responsible risk-spreading principles as something more than our industry’s selfish disambiguation.[SPH]
